Now that the neo-Nazi car attack on a group of anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia, has once again reminded America that hate groups represent a and significant threat to the country (and world, if you look around), it’s probably worth keeping in mind that these groups are in many ways cults. Cults reinforced by far-right media ecosystems that have been steadily radicalizing Americans as American conservatism has veered further and further to the right. A media ecosystem that includes Steve Bannon’s Breitbart along with sites like Daily Stormer and InfoWars and tells its audience that a cabal that includes everyone from liberals to the Muslim Brotherhood are all working together to undermine white Christians and The West in general. It’s the kind of hate landscape that might make a violent lunatic run over a bunch of anti-neo-Nazi protestors. But this is where we are and now a significant contemporary challenge for American is figuring out how to get fellow Americans trapped in such hate cults to recognize they got sucked into something awful and need to leave it and join Team Nice. Sure, that might be fruitless in many cases, but it’s still important to try. And nice. And as we’re going to see as we look at a recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center on the Kingston clan, a ~6,000 member strong polygamous incestuous super-racist apocalyptic cult that runs its own business empire, it’s pretty clear that figuring out how to encourage hate cult members to join their fellow humans and just mellow out is a challenge we can’t ignore. Because they might be apocalyptic death cults planning on winning a race war and becoming diving kings. With their own high-end firearms manufacturer. Hate cult recovery services are something society is going to have to get really good at if its going to survive so we should probably work on that.

President Donald Trump responded to violence that erupted this weekend as white supremacists and a fringe group clashed in Charlottesville, Virginia.

He refused to single out the activity of white supremacists, however, arguing that there was blame to go around on “many sides.”

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides – on many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country, not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama, it’s been going on for a long, long time,” Trump said at a ceremony for the signing of a bill to reform the Veterans Affairs health care system.

“It has no place in America,” he added. “What is vital now is a swift restoration of law and order and the protection of innocent lives.”

Trump went on to emphasize that he loves “all the people of our country,” and called for Americans of different races and backgrounds to remember their shared Americanness.

“We wanna get the situation straightened out in Charlottesville and we want to study it,” he said. “We want to see what we’re doing wrong as a country where things like this can happen.”

Trump’s comments were his third attempt at addressing the unrest in Virginia. First, earlier on Saturday, he condemned “hate” and “violence,” but didn’t mention Charlottesville by name or directly address any of the groups demonstrating there.

We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!

“The president’s remarks were morally frustrating and disappointing,” former NAACP president Cornell Brooks told CNN. “Because while it is good that he says he wants to be a president for all the people and he wants to make America great for all of the people. Let us know this: Throughout his remarks he refused to” call out white supremacists by name.

Trump condemned "hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides." This isn't a many sides issue. This is about white supremacy, plain & simple.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) declared a state of emergency Saturday as fist fights broke out in streets, objects were thrown and reporters were covered in raw sewage. The White House said it has been in contact with McAuliffe’s office, and Tom Bossert, Trump’s homeland security adviser, has had contact with local authorities.

…

Trump’s responses to incidents of violence have varied since he took office.

After several days, Trump tweeted from the @POTUS account – an official White House account, not the personal one he most often uses – to recognize victims of a knife attack in Portland for “standing up to hate and intolerance” for standing up to a man yelling slurs and hate speech. Trump never issued a response to an attack on a mosque in Minnesota earlier this month.

The violence in Charlottesville erupted in the middle of Trump’s 17-day “working vacation” at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Trump has remained active on Twitter throughout his vacation, tweeting criticisms at several lawmakers, making comments on the situation with North Korea and retweeting stories from Fox News.

““We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides – on many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country, not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama, it’s been going on for a long, long time,” Trump said at a ceremony for the signing of a bill to reform the Veterans Affairs health care system.”

Yes, shame on those anti-racist protestors for their displays of bigotry for towards open proud bigots. That was a central element of President Trump’s address to the nation following the attack. And that was his third attempt at addressing the violence at the rally:

…
Trump’s comments were his third attempt at addressing the unrest in Virginia. First, earlier on Saturday, he condemned “hate” and “violence,” but didn’t mention Charlottesville by name or directly address any of the groups demonstrating there.

We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!

He then followed up that tweet with another one 41 minutes later,, finally mentioning Charlottesville by name but not referencing the white supremacists whose rally triggered the chaos.
…

So that was three attempts, and three failures at any sort of direct condemnation of the white power groups and what they were rallying for. The third time was definitely not a charm.

But there is one line in Trump’s response that it worth taking to heart, albeit probably not in the way Trump intended: what can be learn from studying this situation about how to prevent the growing of such movements so we can move past this and maybe actually heal American society:

…
Trump went on to emphasize that he loves “all the people of our country,” and called for Americans of different races and backgrounds to remember their shared Americanness.

“We wanna get the situation straightened out in Charlottesville and we want to study it,” he said. “We want to see what we’re doing wrong as a country where things like this can happen.”
…

“We wanna get the situation straightened out in Charlottesville and we want to study it…We want to see what we’re doing wrong as a country where things like this can happen.”

Well, ok, that’s decent advice. What types of insights can we obtain by taking a step back and study the situation? Well, for starters, it seems like having a President that actually openly condemns white nationalist groups would be a good example of “what we’re doing wrong as a country”. Although that’s more Trump’s fault than the entire country’s. But it’s still quite obvious that there’s quite a few Americans that sympathize with the general worldview put on display by the “Unite the Right” marchers.

So in the interest of “studying our situation”, perhaps there’s value in taking a closer look at a report just put out by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s August 2017 Intelligence Report. It’s an article about the kind of group that has a worldview that’s what you might get if you take the neo-Nazi ‘whites are pure and all others are enemies who must be suppressed and eventually extinguished’ totalitarian identitarian worldview and took it to the extreme. So extreme that they don’t simply fetishize their own race but actually their own bloodline, viewing themselves as a divinely ordained line of the ‘purest’ white people in history with a direct line back to Jesus Christ. So extreme that if they think you have one drop of non-white blood in your ancestry you will be excommunicated. So extreme that they practice incest as a way to not just stay pure but achieve some sort of Aryan super-person. So extreme that the rest of the world must be eventually conquered following a giant race war. And yes, they are Mormons. But still not that much more extreme that your standard extremist. That’s the scariest part.

And since this clan of polygamists cultists, the Kingston clan, represent basically a distilled form of the kind of “us vs them” white supremacists mind-virus – a virus that views “others” as a dehumanized existential threat and the end of the word if white supremacy isn’t dominant – perhaps we can learn something about what motivates the kinds of ‘Alt Right’ worldview? Like, is there any sort of message the broader public can send to people trapped in such cults that would facilitate them ‘snapping out it’? Some way of effectively communicating, “hey, it’s not the end of the world if you leave the cult and join a multi-ethnic culture that values diversity + niceness (i.e. celebrating diversity except for the bigotry), and you’ll be welcomed and MUCH happier and fulfilled when you do”. Is there something society at large can do to facilitate that process that is essentially internal discovery and epiphany in the hearts and minds of people trapped in hate cults? If so, that message would probably be quite useful on freeing people trapped by the Alt-Right hate ideologies too.

The Kingston Klan’s Extra-Extreme Extremism Keeps it All in the Family

So in the spirit of President Trump’s advice, let’s briefly study the Kingston clan, one of the have extreme totalitarian identitarian movements you’ll even come across. First, let’s take a look at this article about them from 2004 when the incest and abuse within the the clan started making national news.

It’s a notable article in context of ‘Alt-Right’ white power groups rallying to “preserve our history and culture, etc” because, of course, when you’re trying to preserve a history of white supremacy and culture you’re obviously trying to preserve the freedom to create a society dominated by white supremacists and not simply “preserve history”. As should be clear, when groups like those behind “Unite the Right” cry out about how they’re just fighting for their freedom of speech and expression, or greater tolerance of their views, that’s a preposterous lie. They’re fighting for the hearts and minds of a large enough swath of White America that would allow them to stage what amounts to a white supremacist political revolution that will allow them to impose a far-right neo-Nazi-style regime of subjugation of everyone who isn’t a white supremacist. The ‘Alt-Right’ far-right movements are fighting for the freedom to build up enough support for an eventual white supremacist takeover of society followed by the dehumanization and subjugation of all “others”. That’s part of why it’s so important to understand how such worldviews sustain their appeal and how to make it clear to susceptible audiences that their lives will be much, much better in a world that embraces genuine niceness.

Lu Ann Kingston was 15 when she married her first cousin Jeremy Kingston in a hush-hush 1995 wedding in Bountiful, Utah. As members of a secretive society of “fundamentalist Mormons” whose leaders practiced polygamy, Lu Ann’s family thought nothing of the fact that Jeremy, then 24, was such a close relative–or that he had three other wives. So entwined were the branches of the family tree that Lu Ann’s cousin-husband was also her nephew.

But the Kingstons’ tangled family ties are threatening to unravel, thanks largely to the efforts of Lu Ann and another former Kingston wife, her niece Mary Ann. In 2000, Lu Ann and her two children fled the 1,000-person society that members call The Order, and she later cooperated with state prosecutors cracking down on sexual abuse of teen girls by polygamists. Last week Jeremy Kingston was sentenced to one year in jail after pleading guilty to felony incest. Meanwhile, Mary Ann Kingston, 22, has brought a $110 million civil suit against 242 Order members and 97 companies they operate, claiming that they share collective responsibility for abuse she suffered at the hands of her father and the uncle she married to become his 15th wife. The two men went to prison in 1999 on charges ranging from child abuse to incest.

Mary Ann’s suit argues that Order members are “jointly liable” because her mistreatment grew directly out of the group’s beliefs. (The watchdog Southern Poverty Law Center used a similar strategy of group responsibility to bankrupt the white-supremacist Aryan Nations in 2000 after its security guards assaulted a pair of black motorists.) Mary Ann claims that the Order’s practice of polygamy led her uncle David Kingston, 33, to marry the 16-year-old and sleep with her. When she fled the marriage, her father, John Daniel Kingston, drove her to a family ranch near the Idaho border and whipped her with a leather belt until she passed out. Kingston spokesman Elden Kingston, 65, calls the suit an effort to “extort money” (the Order now controls a financial empire estimated at $100 million). He hints the family’s lawyers would use hardball tactics, claiming Mary Ann experimented with sex and drugs, and that marrying her to her uncle was an attempt to “help that girl.”

In another legal threat to the clan, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is launching a financial probe of the Kingstons (as well as a second polygamous clan). He hopes to bring an organized-crime-style prosecution against the Kingstons, whose high-ranking members run ranches, shopping centers, a real-estate firm and a coal mine. Elden Kingston denies wrongdoing and dismisses the investigation as “just another example of the state’s long history of persecution” of the Kingstons. But for decades after a disastrous 1953 raid wrenched hundreds of children from their parents, Utah officials virtually ignored the sect and other so-called fundamentalists who practice polygamy in defiance of the law and the Mormon Church’s 1890 ban on plural marriage. The convictions of Mary Ann’s father and uncle ended the laissez-faire period, and public opposition grew last year with the news that polygamy was behind the alleged kidnapping and sexual assault of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart.

Incest is a Kingston tradition. The clan’s leaders have married dozens of first cousins, half sisters and nieces. The Order’s top man, Paul Kingston, counts a half-dozen such relatives among his 20-plus wives, according to ex-members and Attorney General’s investigator Ron Barton. Intermarriage of close relatives dates to Paul’s late father, former leader John Ortell Kingston (who was also Jeremy’s grandfather and Lu Ann’s father). He taught his family that the Kingstons descended from Jesus Christ through a pair of “Jewish princesses,” recalls former member Ron Tucker, 45, another of John Ortell’s sons.

…

The ongoing attention is having an effect. Former members say Paul Kingston recently had to calm anxious members who feared that Mary Ann’s suit will take away their businesses and savings. Elden Kingston says the crackdown on underage marriages has “changed a lot of individuals’ feelings about young marriages.” But they insist on living their own way. “We pay millions of dollars in taxes,” Elden Kingston complains. “We want to live our life and let everybody else live their life.” For the Order, the days of live and let live may be gone.

“The ongoing attention is having an effect. Former members say Paul Kingston recently had to calm anxious members who feared that Mary Ann’s suit will take away their businesses and savings. Elden Kingston says the crackdown on underage marriages has “changed a lot of individuals’ feelings about young marriages.” But they insist on living their own way. “We pay millions of dollars in taxes,” Elden Kingston complains. “We want to live our life and let everybody else live their life.” For the Order, the days of live and let live may be gone.”

At the same time, as the abusive isolating nature of the Kingston clans cult lifestyle makes clear, the vast majority of the people involved are largely victims of cult abuse/brainwashing and indoctrination. They’re really sympathetic figures. As are many people in hate groups. Everyone has their own path into a hate cult and a lot of those paths are pretty horrific. That’s important to keep in mind because the fact that the Alt-Right includes a lot of damaged people in need of healing is all the more reason for them to leave and join Team Nice. Because if Team Nice is nice it should be pretty good at giving that healing.

When it comes to racist Sunday school lessons, the polygamous Kingston clan could teach the Ku Klux Klan a thing or two.

During a recent interview with the Intelligence Report, Jessica Kingston, a former member of the secretive, Salt Lake City-based cult and a star of the A&E reality series “Escaping Polygamy,” remembered, when she was 12, her Sunday school teacher coming into class with a bucket of water and a vial of black food coloring.

The teacher added a drop of dye to the water, and the children watched as the blackness slowly spread.

“The teacher was like, ‘You can never get that out, that is always there now,’” recalled Jessica, now 29. “She talked about how you can’t associate with black people or anybody of a different race.”

This racist display was no one-off. Jessica said she and other children of the Kingston clan — a group also known as The Order, the Davis County Cooperative Society, and the Latter-Day Church of Christ — dropped the N-bomb all the time, as did their parents.

Black people supposedly suffered from multiple scriptural curses, from the mark of Cain and Noah’s curse on Ham in the Old Testament to the racist tenets of early Mormonism that have since been renounced or abandoned by the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the LDS or Mormon church.

Black blood was “the worst thing you can have,” Jessica said, particularly since the Kingstons consider themselves to be the whitest of the white, descended directly from Jesus Christ and King David, the Middle Eastern origins of both men notwithstanding.

Obsessed with the purity of their bloodline and empowered by a sense of entitlement on par with the divine right of kings, the Kingstons have made incest the cornerstone of a self-serving theology that loathes non whites, fosters homophobia and abhors government authority.

Additionally, ex-Order members tell of a reputed church prophecy of an “End of the World War,” an apocalyptic vision that foresees a bloody race war with the Kingstons as the ultimate victors, chosen by their Heavenly Father to rule the world for a millennium.
But given that the Kingstons command an estimated 6,000 adherents, boast a business empire reportedly worth as much as $1 billion and have outlasted myriad bouts with law enforcement and the press, these dreams of world domination may be less delusional than they first seem.

All Along the Watchtower

The Order denies that it encourages racism and homophobia within its ranks.

In a letter to the Intelligence Report responding to allegations made by former members, Kent Johnson, a spokesman for the Davis County Cooperative Society, claimed that The Order’s “foundational principles” include the Golden Rule, and that the church rejects any form of racism or bigotry.

“[W]e directly condemn in action and in words, racist, homophobic or hateful actions against any group or individual,” Johnson wrote.

Johnson maintained that The Order’s vast array of businesses — which includes a grocery store, pawn shops, a garbage disposal business, an insurance company, a politically-influential biofuels plant, and a high-end firearms manufacturer — employs individuals of various racial and ethnic minorities.

The letter asserts that one of the earliest members of the church was a Native American man and that the “Co-op,” as it is sometimes called, has been the victim of prejudice and harassment by Utah’s “majority religion” (i.e., the LDS church) because of the former’s “progressive” ideas.

Indeed, the group was founded during the Great Depression as a communal religious organization where members dedicated their earnings and possessions to building “the Kingdom of God on Earth,” as one church document attests.

Its ominous-sounding moniker, “The Order,” is a reference to the United Order, a quasi-utopian society proposed by LDS-founder Joseph Smith, and practiced in some Mormon communities under the leadership of early church president Brigham Young.

The Order can rightly claim discrimination by mainstream Mormonism, but this is due to its embrace of polygamy, which the LDS church officially abandoned in 1890 in order for Utah to become a state. The renunciation of polygamy is now church doctrine, and the Mormon church has a policy of excommunicating polygamists. Kingston forebears were among those who suffered this fate.

Polygamy is outlawed in Utah, both by the state’s constitution, and in statute, where it is a third-degree felony, with a possible punishment of five years in prison. But for their part, The Order and other fundamentalist sects believe the LDS church exists in a state of apostasy for abandoning what they see as a bedrock principle of their faith.

According to church lore, The Order came into existence when founder Charles “Elden” Kingston saw Jesus in the mountains above the family’s settlement in Bountiful, Utah, inspiring him to create the DCCS in 1935.

The family’s dedication to “the principle” of polygamy already had been established by Kingston’s father, who had three wives. Elden continued the tradition. According to historian Brian Hales’ Modern Polygamy and Mormon Fundamentalism: The Generations After the Manifesto, Brother Elden, as he was also known, had five wives and 17 children.

Elden also instituted the church law of “one above the other,” requiring members’ blind obedience to the church’s hierarchy of “numbered men,” with Elden being Brother Number One.

Brother Elden died of penile cancer in 1948, despite the best efforts of some family members to burn away the cancer using acid. Elden had predicted that he would be resurrected from the dead, so clan members kept his body on ice for three days, to no avail.

His brother, John “Ortell” Kingston, took over the leadership of The Order — incorporated in the 1970s as the Latter Day Church of Christ. Ortell is credited with expanding The Order’s business empire and making the family immensely wealthy. His seven sons and two daughters by LaDonna Peterson, the second of his 13 wives, are reputed to be the inner circle that runs the cult.

A stern disciplinarian, who in later years looked and dressed like a mortician, Ortell made incest a tenet of the clan’s faith, informed by his work breeding Holstein cows on the Kingstons’ dairy farm.

A 1999 Salt Lake Tribune article mapped the Kingstons’ incestuous family tree, quoting one of Ortell’s 65 kids, ex-Order member Connie Rugg as saying, “My father experimented [with] inbreeding with his cattle and then he turned to his children.”

In order to maintain his family’s “superior bloodlines,” Ortell married and had children with two of his half-sisters and two nieces. He orchestrated all unions within the cult, which was maintained with classic mind control techniques, corporal punishment, fasting and bizarre dietary practices. Ortell died in 1987, but his progeny continued the polygamy, the inbreeding and the marriages to young female teens that he instituted.

Control of The Order then passed to Ortell’s well-educated son Paul Kingston, one of several lawyers in a cult whose members dress normally and try not to draw attention to themselves.

Known variously as “Brother Paul,” “the leader,” and “the man on the watchtower” by Order members, this unremarkable, balding middle-aged man reportedly has 27 wives and over 300 children. Three of his wives are his half-sisters. One is a first cousin. Two are nieces.

John Daniel Kingston seen here in 1999, pleading no contest to beating his 16-year-old daughter after she attempted to flee an arranged marriage with her uncle David, Kingston’s brother.

Similarly, his older brother John Daniel Kingston has had 14 wives, four of them his half-sisters. Another is a first cousin.

Like polygamy, incest is a third-degree felony in Utah, and as with polygamy, convictions are rare. Over the years, state law enforcement and the courts have sporadically addressed the incest in the Kingston ranks.

In 1999, Paul’s younger brother David Ortell Kingston was convicted of taking his 16-year-old niece as wife number 15. The incest came to light after the girl tried to escape the arranged “celestial” marriage — an illegal marriage, sans license.

Her disobedience incurred the wrath of her father Daniel, who took her to a family ranch near the Idaho border and savagely beat her. The girl, who as an adult would unsuccessfully sue the clan, then walked miles to the nearest gas station, where she called the police.

Daniel was arrested and eventually spent 28 weeks in a county jail for felony child abuse. David was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the incest, but served only four before being paroled.

In 2003, another clan member, Jeremy Kingston pleaded guilty to incest for taking 15-year-old Lu Ann Kingston as his fourth wife. Jeremy was nearly 10 years her senior at the time. Due to the Kingstons’ convoluted genealogy, Lu Ann was both his first cousin and his aunt. As part of a plea bargain, Jeremy spent just one year in prison.

The ‘Curse’ of Blackness

In secret videotapes of Order church meetings aired on Escaping Polygamy, Paul’s nephew Nick Young, speaking from a church lectern, identifies himself as a numbered man, number 72, to be precise.

The son of Paul’s sister Rachel — herself a daughter of Ortell and LaDonna Kingston — Young was the only current member of the Kingston clan, out of the many contacted for this story, who consented to a live, on-the-record interview.

Young is the owner of Desert Tech, a Utah gun manufacturer, which produces sniper rifles and so-called “bullpup” rifles, The latter, unlike conventional magazine-fed rifles, have shorter barrels, with the gun’s action located behind the trigger. These specialty firearms can cost anywhere from $2,500 to $8,000 each.

Desert Tech and its rifles have been featured on Fox News, Mythbusters, Daredevil and The Blacklist, among other TV shows. Young told Intelligence Report that his company has sold weapons, with the approval of the U.S. State Department, to governments in Europe and the Middle East, Saudi Arabia being one.

Young also claimed Desert Tech had sold guns to Picatinny Arsenal, the research division of the U.S. military.

“We haven’t gotten any big U.S. contracts,” Young explained. “Obviously, we would love to.”

Spokesmen for both the U.S. State Department and for Picatinny Arsenal could neither verify nor deny Young’s claims.

The company was founded in 2007 with an investment from family members. Young denied that The Order was racist or taught any form of bigotry, and said he had people of all races working for him.

“What we’re taught is to love our neighbor, that all people, all races no matter who they are … deserve to be loved,” he explained.

Still, he conceded that some Order members may have prejudiced beliefs because “in our organization people have freedom of choice.”

So what about polygamy? Is it a requirement to gain the highest levels of heaven?

“Yeah, I believe in it,” he said. “As far as how you end up in heaven, that’s up to God.”

Young declined to comment when asked if he practices polygamy. Intelligence Report then read the names of women believed to be his wives — four in all.

“Okay, I have one legal wife,” he said. “But I do have children with other women.”

Asked if two women named were in fact his first cousins, Young paused, finally replying, “I guess I’m curious as to what you’re trying to get at here.”

Before the call ended, Young insisted that he “didn’t admit to any kind of incest or anything.” When Intelligence Report inquired if Young thought there was anything wrong with first cousins getting married, Young opined that such issues were between the individuals involved and God.

Nevertheless, former members of The Order say that incest and racism are inextricably linked in The Order’s teachings.

During an interview with this reporter, Lu Ann Kingston, whose defiance of the cult led to the conviction of her former “spiritual” husband Jeremy, recalled that Order members saw intermarriage as a way to “keep the bloodline pure.”

And by pure, they meant pure white.

All outsiders are considered to be beneath Order members, she explained. But The Order saves most of its bile for blacks and other non whites. Ethnic jokes and stereotypes were commonly repeated. Chinese people were called “stupid,” and Mexicans were “dirty,” said Lu Ann, adding, “because of their skin.”

Allison, a 17 year-old ex-Kingston member says not much has changed since Lu Ann’s day.

“I didn’t even know the n-word was bad until I was like 15 or 16,” she told Intelligence Report.

Once free of the cult, Lu Ann, Allison and other ex-Order members have had to unlearn the hatred that was drilled into their heads. The mere rumor of black blood could condemn someone in the eyes of Order members.

That’s what happened with Ron Tucker’s family. Tucker is another of Ortell’s many sons, though not from the favored wife, LaDonna.

Seated on a couch, sipping lemonade in his home in a Salt Lake City suburb, he resembles Paul Kingston quite a bit. The two were playmates when they were boys.

A loyal Order member for years, he lost his faith and ended up leaving the Order over a curse of sorts, leveled at his family by LaDonna. Supposedly, LaDonna had a dream wherein it was revealed that anyone who left The Order would be tainted by black blood.

Somehow LaDonna’s curse was transferred to the Tuckers via Christy, Ron’s wife, because, Christy’s mom left The Order and married an Irishman, before leaving him and returning to the fold.

“I could see that the leaders of The Order really did believe we had black ancestors,” Ron explained, with Christy next to him, and his adult daughters Emily and Julie nearby.

Boys began to show interest in Julie as she matured, but Paul, as the clan’s leader, warned them away, because of Julie’s black blood.

Up to this point, Julie had treated the rumor like a joke. Her younger sister Emily thought it was a joke, too, until one day another Order kid told her, “We can’t play with you because the Tuckers are niggers.”

Julie left the cult at age 19. Her parents and siblings eventually left as well.

Ron says the cult’s justification for its racism goes back to early Mormon teachings about a war in heaven between the forces of Satan and those of Jesus. The battle took place in the spiritual pre-existence that Mormons believe all souls come from. Blacks were “the less valiant people in heaven” who sat on the sidelines while others took sides, according to The Order.

Their punishment? Dark skin, of course.

Another of Ortell’s teachings: Adolf Hitler had the right idea about creating a master race, but didn’t have the Lord’s help, so he failed.

Tucker recounted the clan’s version of the apocalypse, the “End of the World War,” a riff on a prophecy some ascribe to Joseph Smith, called The White Horse Prophecy. In it, black people come close to killing off the white race until they are countered by Native Americans, symbolized by a Red Horse, which gallops to the White Horse’s rescue.

“That will open up for The Order to rise up and take over the world,” Ron said.

The Tuckers think this is all hogwash now, though they were programmed to believe it at the time.

Recordings of church testimony given by various Kingstons serve as further evidence of the cult’s bigoted teachings.

In one, Ortell warns that there is a movement afoot that wants to “homogenize the people” and “make one race,” by mixing all the races up.

In another, Order attorney Carl Kingston warns listeners about marrying up with “Ham’s kids,” a reference to the aforementioned Biblical curse. “If you have as much as one drop of that blood in your veins,” says Carl, “you’re cursed from holding the priesthood.”

The lawyer’s words call to mind another heavenly curse, described in 2 Nephi, Chapter 5 of the Book of Mormon, where God caused a “skin of blackness” to come upon a group called the Lamanites, supposedly ancestors of Native Americans.

Modern interpretations of this passage vary, but The Order apparently takes quite literally this idea of “blackness” being a sign of iniquity.

Soy Makes You Gay
LGBT people fare little better in the Kingston clan.

One ex-Order member, who asked to be referred to as “Scott,” instead of his real name for fear of retribution by clan members, said hatred of gays was big in the Kingston clan, with the word “faggot” in frequent use.

For fun he and other Order men would go to a park frequented by gay males, looking for victims.

“We would cause harm,” he confessed. “Bad harm. Hospital harm.”

While part of The Order, Val Snow, a twenty-something gay man with a wry sense of humor, believed being gay was like “spitting in the eye of God.” Snow is the son of Daniel Kingston, whom he paints as “a little man with a lot of power.”

From a young age, Snow worked for Order companies to help feed his siblings, a responsibility some Kingston men are known to shirk.

Snow began dating men when he was 22. When this got around to his dad, his father packed up Snow’s belongings and left them in the room of a hotel owned by The Order. Daniel’s ultimatum: Stay in The Order, date no one, and have no contact with family. Or leave.

Snow left.

He says The Order regards homosexuality as a choice. If gay men stay in the closet, they are allowed to remain in the cult as “worker bees.”

Snow also remembered being taught end-time prophecies, with a “cleansing” wherein the streets of Salt Lake City would run red with blood.

“All of the gay people would definitely be the first to go,” he said.

Another of the cult’s teachings was that soy can make you gay, an anti-government conspiracy theory popular in some right-wing circles.

“I guess I just had too much soy,” Snow smiled.

Ex-order members interviewed by the Intelligence Report generally agreed with the characterization of the Kingston clan as a “hate group.”

Ron Tucker went so far as to call his former brethren “white supremacists,” and “ten times more racist” than your run-of-the-mill skinhead.

As for its anti-government views, allegations of fraud against government entities have long dogged the Kingstons.

In the 1980s, the state of Utah sued John Ortell Kingston over welfare fraud related to his many wives. Rather than submit to DNA tests, which could have revealed the incest in his brood, he coughed up a more than $200,000 settlement.

More recently, the Kingston-owned Washakie Renewable Energy (WRE) agreed to pay a $3 million fine after it was sued by the federal government for raking in tax credits for biofuels it never produced.

WRE’s influence earned special scrutiny in February 2016 after the IRS, the EPA and other government agencies raided owner Jacob Kingston’s house as well as The Order’s bank and other locations, carting away banker’s box after banker’s box of records. Nothing has come of the raids yet, and the IRS refused comment on the matter when contacted by this publication.

But The Order’s critics say that cult members see nothing wrong with bilking the government, a time-honored tradition among FLDS sects, gleefully referred to as “bleeding the beast.”

More troubling, during a contentious 2004 custody case that ensued when Jessica and her sister Andrea fled Daniel Kingston’s household, a judge in the case reportedly was the subject of a death threat, allegedly from Kingston clan members. There was also testimony, during one hearing, that someone in the Kingston clan wanted to blow up the courthouse.

Given such incidents, could Order members be a threat to law enforcement?

Ron Kingston says The Order’s leadership has too much to lose for something like that to happen.

“Paul would rather have the wealth and the money than the isolation and the conflict,” he said.

Matt Browning seems less sure. A retired Arizona law enforcement officer, Browning is the president and founder of the Skinhead Intelligence Network and is in charge of security for the A&E show, where his wife Tawni works as the casting producer.

Browning sees similarities between The Order and the religion-minded racists of the World Church of the Creator and the Christian Identity movement. There is also some overlap with Sovereign citizens, he contends.

And they are growing. Former Order members tell of babies being born nearly every week in the church. And during a recent picnic to honor the birthday of patriarch John Ortell Kingston, Order families descended on a Salt Lake Valley park, where hundreds of children of all ages blanketed the park’s green expanse.

Accounts of clan babies being born with congenital defects and other problems abound, including dwarfism, albinism and children born minus fingernails or without genitals.

“During a recent interview with the Intelligence Report, Jessica Kingston, a former member of the secretive, Salt Lake City-based cult and a star of the A&E reality series “Escaping Polygamy,” remembered, when she was 12, her Sunday school teacher coming into class with a bucket of water and a vial of black food coloring.”

As Jessica Kingston recounts, being non-white was basically seen as “the worst thing you can have” and corruption of the divine whiteness lineage of the Kingstons that went back to directly to Jesus and King David:

… The teacher added a drop of dye to the water, and the children watched as the blackness slowly spread.

“The teacher was like, ‘You can never get that out, that is always there now,’” recalled Jessica, now 29. “She talked about how you can’t associate with black people or anybody of a different race.”

This racist display was no one-off. Jessica said she and other children of the Kingston clan — a group also known as The Order, the Davis County Cooperative Society, and the Latter-Day Church of Christ — dropped the N-bomb all the time, as did their parents.

Black people supposedly suffered from multiple scriptural curses, from the mark of Cain and Noah’s curse on Ham in the Old Testament to the racist tenets of early Mormonism that have since been renounced or abandoned by the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the LDS or Mormon church.

Black blood was “the worst thing you can have,” Jessica said, particularly since the Kingstons consider themselves to be the whitest of the white, descended directly from Jesus Christ and King David, the Middle Eastern origins of both men notwithstanding.
…

But they aren’t just trying to create a white supremacists cult enclave. The cult’s leaders apparently also view themselves as having a divine right to be kings of the world and practice selective incestuous breeding within the clan to achieve some sort of divine super-whiteness. And this is all part of a prophecy that involves an eventual race war where the streets will run with blood and that will enable them to emerge victorious over all. As they see it, Hitler was right in trying to create a Master Race, but he didn’t have God’s backing and that’s why he failed:

Obsessed with the purity of their bloodline and empowered by a sense of entitlement on par with the divine right of kings, the Kingstons have made incest the cornerstone of a self-serving theology that loathes non whites, fosters homophobia and abhors government authority.

Additionally, ex-Order members tell of a reputed church prophecy of an “End of the World War,” an apocalyptic vision that foresees a bloody race war with the Kingstons as the ultimate victors, chosen by their Heavenly Father to rule the world for a millennium.

…

A 1999 Salt Lake Tribune article mapped the Kingstons’ incestuous family tree, quoting one of Ortell’s 65 kids, ex-Order member Connie Rugg as saying, “My father experimented [with] inbreeding with his cattle and then he turned to his children.”

In order to maintain his family’s “superior bloodlines,” Ortell married and had children with two of his half-sisters and two nieces. He orchestrated all unions within the cult, which was maintained with classic mind control techniques, corporal punishment, fasting and bizarre dietary practices. Ortell died in 1987, but his progeny continued the polygamy, the inbreeding and the marriages to young female teens that he instituted.

…

During an interview with this reporter, Lu Ann Kingston, whose defiance of the cult led to the conviction of her former “spiritual” husband Jeremy, recalled that Order members saw intermarriage as a way to “keep the bloodline pure.”

And by pure, they meant pure white.

All outsiders are considered to be beneath Order members, she explained. But The Order saves most of its bile for blacks and other non whites. Ethnic jokes and stereotypes were commonly repeated. Chinese people were called “stupid,” and Mexicans were “dirty,” said Lu Ann, adding, “because of their skin.”

…

Ron says the cult’s justification for its racism goes back to early Mormon teachings about a war in heaven between the forces of Satan and those of Jesus. The battle took place in the spiritual pre-existence that Mormons believe all souls come from. Blacks were “the less valiant people in heaven” who sat on the sidelines while others took sides, according to The Order.

Their punishment? Dark skin, of course.

Another of Ortell’s teachings: Adolf Hitler had the right idea about creating a master race, but didn’t have the Lord’s help, so he failed.

Tucker recounted the clan’s version of the apocalypse, the “End of the World War,” a riff on a prophecy some ascribe to Joseph Smith, called The White Horse Prophecy. In it, black people come close to killing off the white race until they are countered by Native Americans, symbolized by a Red Horse, which gallops to the White Horse’s rescue.

“That will open up for The Order to rise up and take over the world,” Ron said.
…

And this group owns a billion dollar business empire, including a high-end weapons manufacturer. But don’t worry because, as one of the group leaders proclaims, they’re really all about loving thy neighbor and there’s only a few racists in the group:

…Young is the owner of Desert Tech, a Utah gun manufacturer, which produces sniper rifles and so-called “bullpup” rifles, The latter, unlike conventional magazine-fed rifles, have shorter barrels, with the gun’s action located behind the trigger. These specialty firearms can cost anywhere from $2,500 to $8,000 each.

Desert Tech and its rifles have been featured on Fox News, Mythbusters, Daredevil and The Blacklist, among other TV shows. Young told Intelligence Report that his company has sold weapons, with the approval of the U.S. State Department, to governments in Europe and the Middle East, Saudi Arabia being one.

Young also claimed Desert Tech had sold guns to Picatinny Arsenal, the research division of the U.S. military.

“We haven’t gotten any big U.S. contracts,” Young explained. “Obviously, we would love to.”

Spokesmen for both the U.S. State Department and for Picatinny Arsenal could neither verify nor deny Young’s claims.

The company was founded in 2007 with an investment from family members. Young denied that The Order was racist or taught any form of bigotry, and said he had people of all races working for him.

“What we’re taught is to love our neighbor, that all people, all races no matter who they are … deserve to be loved,” he explained.

Still, he conceded that some Order members may have prejudiced beliefs because “in our organization people have freedom of choice.”
…

“What we’re taught is to love our neighbor, that all people, all races no matter who they are … deserve to be loved,” he explained.

We just want to “love thy neighbor”. That was the message from the guy who founded the race war cult’s high-end weapons manufacturing firm. And it’s worth note that apocalyptic wealthy cults that own their own high-end weapons manufacturer aren’t as uncommon as one might hope.

The Hate Cult in the White House

Now after looking at that profile of the Kingston clan, the question is raised in relation to the larger Alt-Right white supremacist movement that continues to use the Trump White House’s quiet approval to mainstream itself and present its members as some sort of aggrieved segment of American society: So what exactly is the key difference between the Kingstons’ worldview and that or your typical neo-Nazi? Sure, there are undoubtedly some differences in terms of the religious/incest stuff maybe. But in terms of the mindless fetishization of ‘whiteness’ coupled with a need for a rigid authoritarian hierarchical society, is there really all that big a difference between an apocalyptic racist theocratic polygamist cult that views all non-whites as an existential threat and the general ‘Alt-Right’ neo-Nazi worldview that portrays non-whites, women, gays, and anyone who isn’t a far-right white male as an existential threat to far-right white males? If there are substantial fundamental differences, it’s unclear what they are because both groups fundamentally view non-white conservatives as a dehumanized “other” unworthy of “thy neighbors” love or an interesting group of people worth getting to know, but instead an inevitable rival group that represents an existential threat that must be extinguished. And it’s that worldview that President Trump refuses to denounce. Because the ‘Alt-Right’ and its sympathizers are far too important a political constituency (and Trump is kind of of Nazi himself).

Earlier this month, The Atlanticreported on a memo written by a since-fired NSC staffer named Rich Higgins. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster fired Higgins in July over the memo. But Higgins’ dismissal was part of McMaster’s broader effort to assert control over an NSC which still has or had numerous staffers brought in by Mike Flynn. Yesterday Foreign Policypublished the memo in its entirety along with new reporting about the context of the memo, its discovery and Higgins’ dismissal.

The memo itself is fairly described as nuts. But I want to get into more detail about just what it contains because the details are important on several fronts. But before that I want to mention a key element of FP’s reporting, which I at least think is new in its specifics. If you don’t waste your time on Twitter or haven’t closely followed the so-called alt-right, you may not know the name Mike Cernovich. His Wikipedia page describes him as “an American alt-right social media personality, writer, and conspiracy theorist”, which is not a bad description. He was a big promoter of the ‘pizzagate’ conspiracy theory which ended up almost getting people killed in DC last year. Before that he was a ‘men’s empowerment’ activist who took a more clearly political turn in 2016 race. He’s provocative and goofy in as much as a white supremacist and Nazi-sympathizer can be goofy.

In any case, since Trump’s inauguration Cernovich has been carrying on a sort of rearguard action against the Trump White House, notionally supporting ‘Trump’ while waging online battles against the mix of ‘globalists’, sell-outs and ‘deep state’ forces trying to undo the Trump revolution. Through all this Cernovich has claimed he has sources deep and high up in the Trump White House and that he’s sitting on all manner of stories that could change everything. It has always been clear that Cernovich does have some ‘sources’ or at least people leaking him stuff or access to some information ahead of the conventional media because more than once he’s reported things on his website or Twitter which did turn out to be true. But one of my biggest takeaways from the FP piece is that this is apparently far more true than at least I realized. Indeed, H.R. McMaster, in this telling at least, is obsessed with rooting out the NSC staffers who are leaking to Cernovich and it was that leak hunt that led to the discovery of the memo we were discussing above.

The controversy over the memo has its origins in a hunt for staffers believed to be providing information to right-wing blogger Mike Cernovich, who seemed to have uncanny insight into the inner workings of the NSC. Cernovich in the past few months has been conducting a wide-ranging campaign against the national security advisor.

“McMaster was just very, very obsessed with this, with Cernovich,” a senior administration official told FP. “He had become this incredible specter.”

In July, the memo was discovered in Higgins’s email during what two sources described to Foreign Policy as a “routine security” audit of NSC staffers’ communications. Another source, however, characterized it as a McCarthy-type leak investigation targeting staffers suspected of communicating with Cernovich.

Higgins, who had worked on the Trump campaign and transition before coming to the NSC, drafted the memo in late May and then circulated the memo to friends from the transition, a number of whom are now in the White House.

After the memo was discovered, McMaster’s deputy, Ricky Waddell, summoned Higgins, who was told he could resign — or be fired, and risk losing his security clearance, according to two sources.

Higgins, who agreed to resign, was escorted out of the building. He later learned from his colleagues still at the NSC that his association to this now-infamous memo was the reason he was removed.

Needless to say, if McMaster is surveilling his own staff to find out who is talking to Cernovich, then Cernovich is playing a big, big role in the unfolding Trump administration drama. That’s a big deal and a highly disturbing one, which we will come back to.

Now let’s discuss the memo itself. As I said, it’s nuts on many levels. But the details of what it contains are important. I have a series of observations. Let me lay them out seriatim.

1: First, an overview. The gist of Higgins memo is that President Trump is under a sustained, illegitimate and conspiracy driven attack by the forces of “cultural Marxism” which aims to drive him from office. These forces include basically everyone from the far left to establishment Republicans, either as conspirators or dupes and fellow travelers. Key elements of the drama are that the American left is in league with ‘radical Islam’, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, to destroy America from the within. Both sides – the forces of the ‘cultural Marxism’ and the supporters of President Trump – are in what amounts to a final, all-or-nothing battle. Indeed, Higgins argues that the country is now in the midst of a pitched battle for the future existence of America in which the person of President Trump is a proxy for the future of America itself. It is a Manichean, verging on political eschatological vision of contemporary America. This is the concluding paragraph of the memo, emphasis added …

The recent turn of events give rise to the observation that the defense of President Trump is the defense of America. In the same way President Lincoln was surrounded by political opposition both inside and outside of his wire, in both overt and covert forms, so too is President Trump. Had Lincoln failed, so too would have the Republic. The administration has been maneuvered into a constant backpedal by relentless political warfare attacks structured to force him to assume a reactive posture that assures inadequate responses. The president can either drive or be driven by events; it’s time for him to drive them.

2: Trump Era Politics is Really War. It is far down the list of problems with this memo and this situation. But it is to put it mildly highly irregular and problematic for a former Pentagon official who is now an NSC staffer to be circulating memos on domestic ‘political warfare’. But the memo is replete with the imagery, terminology and conceptual framework of war, even down to high-drama, often manic descriptions of the ‘battlespace’ on which President Trump is fighting the forces of ‘cultural Marxism’. The memo views opposition politics in the Trump era as illegitimate and a form of violent resistance against the state.

Again from the memo …

This is not politics as usual but rather political warfare at an unprecedented level that is openly engaged in the direct targeting of a seated president through manipulation of the news cycle. It must be recognized on its own terms so that immediate action can be taken. At its core, these campaigns run on multiple lines of effort, serve as the non-violent line of effort of a wider movement, and execute political warfare agendas that reflect cultural Marxist outcomes. The campaigns operate through narratives. Because the hard left is aligned with lslamist organizations at local (ANTI FA working with Muslim Brotherhood doing business as MSA and CAIR), national (ACLU and BLM working with CAIR and MPAC) and international levels (OIC working with OSCEand the UN), recognition must given to the fact that they seamlessly interoperate at the narrative level as well. In candidate Trump, the opposition saw a threat to the “politically correct” enforcement narratives they’ve meticulously laid in over the past few decades. In President Trump, they see a latent threat to continue that effort to ruinous effect and their retaliatory response reflects this fear.

As you can see, a persistent theme of the memo is that what most of us would recognize as an embattled and unpopular President fighting widespread opposition is actually more like a domestic rebellion and needs to be addressed as such.

Again from the memo …

Culturally conditioned to limit responses to such attacks as yet another round in the on-going drone from diversity and multicultural malcontents, these broadsides are discounted as political correctness run amuck. However, political correctness is a weapon against reason and critical thinking. This weapon functions as the enforcement mechanism of diversity narratives that seek to implement cultural Marxism. Candidate Trump’s rhetoric in the campaign not only cut through the Marxist narrative, he did so in ways that were viscerally comprehensible to a voting bloc that then made candidate Trump the president; making that bloc self-aware in the process. President Trump is either the candidate he ran as, or he is nothing.

Recognizing in candidate Trump an existential threat to cultural Marxist memes that dominate the prevailing cultural narrative, those that benefit recognize the threat he poses and seek his destruction. For this cabal, Trump must be destroyed. Far from politics as usual, this is a political warfare effort that seeks the destruction of a sitting president. Since Trump took office, the situation has intensified to crisis level proportions. For those engaged in the effort, especially those from within the “deep state” or permanent government apparatus, this raises clear Title 18 (legal) concerns.

Consider this passage about the “battlespace”.

Battlespace. These attack narratives are pervasive, full spectrum and institutionalized at all levels. They operate in social media, television, the 24-hour news cycle in all media, and are entrenched at the upper levels of the bureaucracies and within the foreign policy establishment. They inform the entertainment industry from late night monologues, to situation comedies, to television series memes, to movie themes. The effort required to direct this capacity at President Trump is little more than a programming decision to do so. The cultural Marxist narrative is fully deployed, pervasive, full spectrum and ongoing. Regarding the president, attacks have become a relentless 24/7 effort.

This mix of observations and feelings might be more simply summed up as “Wow, we seem to be super unpopular. And we’re being attacked constantly!”

Many White Houses have had this feeling. It’s a tough job. But Higgins sees it quite differently, as an integrated, conspiratorial effort to drive the President from office and destroy the America he represents. Indeed, Higgins explicitly cites the doctrine’s of Maoist ‘people’s war’ as the conceptual framework and the plan Trump’s enemies are following. I’m not kidding about this. From the memo: “As used here, ‘political warfare’ does not concern activities associated with the American political process but rather exclusively refers to political warfare as understood by the Maoist Insurgency model. Political warfare is one of the five components of a Maoist insurgency. Maoist methodologies employ synchronized violent and non-violent actions that focus on mobilization of individuals and groups to action. This approach envisions the direct use of non-violent operational arts and tactics as elements of combat power.”

Again, my description isn’t semantic or hyperbolic. Higgins views a vast array of disparate domestic political movements, institutions and cultural voices as together executing an organized plan to drive Trump from office and that the instigators of this effort are the far left and Islamic radicals trying to perpetuate ‘cultural Marxism’.

3: The Domestic War is a Meme War: A week ago, the above-mentioned Cernovich tweeted this much-derided message.

As a patriot I offer to go to NSC, teach them how to fight and win memetic wars. McMaster fears me, well let's fight radical Islam together. https://t.co/nJdcZ4oVHT

What is “memetic warfare”? It is essentially fighting people on social media with photoshopped images, propagating ‘memes’ – nugget sized images or blocks of text which inject messages and ideas into the conversations of a broader public. It also involves digital vigilantism, organized intimidation campaigns, threats and a lot more. There’s something to this. And Cernovich is demonstrably an able practitioner of it. He’s built up a huge following based on pretty much just that. At the end of the day though, McMaster is a master of war wars. And ‘memetic warfare’ is really just spending the day mouthing off on Twitter. So it’s a bit of a comical boast. But if you read the Higgins memo it is replete with the vocabulary and mental world of ‘memetic warfare’. These two men are in contact with each other and share the same mental and ideational world. Which seems to be why McMaster fired Higgins. To a degree, it’s a slightly higher-brow version of what you can listen to on Hannity every night. That’s not surprising since – unlikely the imagined conspiracies of Higgins memo – Hannity, the Cernovich crew at the NSC, Trump, Don Jr. and the rest do seem to be in regular contact with each other.

4: What is ‘Cultural Marxism’? Higgins is not the only person to use this phrase. But as he uses it ‘cultural Marxism’ is essentially the entirety of social movements, cultural change, growing internationalization of public life in America that distinguishes the American of the early 21st century from the idealized public version of America as presented in media and mainstream TV and cinema in the 1950s. There is arguably such a thing as ‘cultural Marxism’ – radical critiques of American society, and its culture and economic underpinnings, which exist but don’t have a great deal of traction outside the academy and some radical political circles. There is also the range of critiques of American gender and racial norms and power structures that critique ‘patriarchy’ and ‘white supremacy’. These are obviously much more pervasive debates within contemporary American society, ones which are disproportionately (though by no means exclusively) rooted in the ideas of the younger generation of Americans. They are real, deeply contested and genuinely threatening to a large segment of the US population. They’re not ‘cultural Marxism’ in any sense other than as swear words and trash talk in domestic political debates. But even this isn’t really what Higgins is talking about. It is a far more expansive and watered-down definition and set of ideas which are taken more or less as givens in corporate America under the blandified catchwords of ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’. That’s all ‘cultural Marxism’ for Higgins and all driven by an alliance of ‘the left’ and Islamist radicals.

5: The Trumpite Milieu: Where does this stuff come from? Higgins is a former soldier and later a Pentagon staffer. Some of his writing is simply taking fairly conventional military planning jargon and applying it to domestic politics. But reading Higgins I hear the voices of two other men loud and clear: Frank Gaffney and David Horowitz.

Gaffney was a mid-tier Reagan Pentagon appointee who has been a constant presence in Washington for the last three decades and has in the years since 9/11 become the preeminent author and propagator of various Islamophobic conspiracy theories. To set expectations properly, I’m not talking about counter-terrorism hawks who say the US needs to surveil Muslim immigrant populations or limit immigration by Muslims. Gaffney says the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the US government at all levels with sleeper agents and fellow travelers. There’s crazy and there’s crazy. Gaffney is in the latter category.

As Peter Beinart noted earlier this year, most mainstream Republicans have treated Gaffney like a crank for years. (Indeed, he’s for years fought a nitwit battle to expel Grover Norquist from the conservative movement because Gaffney claims Norquist is a Muslim Brotherhood agent or fellow traveler.) But he’s viewed as a major thinker and adviser in the Trump White House. And Mike Flynn was deeply under his influence. Indeed, in 2016 Flynn co-authored a book with Michael Ledeen, a comparable though somewhat more obscure figure. Ledeen is a different, with his own distinct though no less crazy conspiracy theories largely tied to radical Islamist, terrorist and simply anti-American groups. The upshot is that Flynn was totally down with and in the Frank Gaffney nutbag and he staffed the Trump world with people of the same mindset. A lot of them are still there.

David Horowitz is a one-time member of the New Left who’s made his living for decades as a self-styled Whittaker Chambers of the nutball right. I can tell you from personal experience that he is simply one of the worst people in American public life. Think Roger Stone is terrible? Me too. But I’ve met Roger and he’s kind of a blast to spend a bit of time with if you can bracket out the politics. I’ve met Horowitz too. He’s an awful person. Higgins obsession with ‘cultural Marxism’, ‘political warfare’, Maoist insurgency tactics and all manner of other sub-Marxist claptrap is pure Horowitz. It is both how he thinks and also his schtick within the conservative movement: the guy who knows all the dark truths about ‘the left’ and is sharing them with the embattled right. Horowitz too is tight with the Trump world and the various extremists and conspiracy theorists who cluster around it. I don’t know whether Higgins got this stuff directly from Horowitz or just atmospherically because his influence is so pervasive in today’s right. But the influence is unmistakable.

For our present purposes, the important point is that even though mainstream conservatives – not to mention everyone to their left – have long regarded both men as no more than activist bilge water, they are both highly influential in the Trump White House. Just as importantly, while they’ve generally been regarded as jokes by mainstream political reporters, they’ve actually spent years propagating their ideas among the people we now call the Trump base. So their ideas are as important as they are nonsensical and hyperbolic because they are at the center of power and draw on a mass base of support.

Higgins himself may be out. But the FP piece reports that Don Jr. got hold of his memo during the firestorm of controversy over his June 2016 Trump Tower meeting and loved it. He shared it with his father, President Trump, who loved it too. He got angry when Sean Hannity told him that Higgins had been fired over it. So even though Higgins is out, these ideas are still pervasive in the Trump White House and get an enthusiastic thumbs up from Trump himself. Even though McMaster won the battle, to put it in Higginsian terms, the war continues. And it seems as likely as not, on the FP’s reporting, that McMaster will eventually lose.

“First, an overview. The gist of Higgins memo is that President Trump is under a sustained, illegitimate and conspiracy driven attack by the forces of “cultural Marxism” which aims to drive him from office. These forces include basically everyone from the far left to establishment Republicans, either as conspirators or dupes and fellow travelers. Key elements of the drama are that the American left is in league with ‘radical Islam’, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, to destroy America from the within. Both sides – the forces of the ‘cultural Marxism’ and the supporters of President Trump – are in what amounts to a final, all-or-nothing battle. Indeed, Higgins argues that the country is now in the midst of a pitched battle for the future existence of America in which the person of President Trump is a proxy for the future of America itself. It is a Manichean, verging on political eschatological vision of contemporary America…”

And as Josh Marshall ends with, while Rich Higgins, the Alt-Right NSC staffer, may have been successfully removed by H.R. McMaster, his overall message of the world being against Trump and the Alt-Right being his only real ally in this is a message that continues to resonate within the White House and Trump himself:

…Higgins himself may be out. But the FP piece reports that Don Jr. got hold of his memo during the firestorm of controversy over his June 2016 Trump Tower meeting and loved it. He shared it with his father, President Trump, who loved it too. He got angry when Sean Hannity told him that Higgins had been fired over it. So even though Higgins is out, these ideas are still pervasive in the Trump White House and get an enthusiastic thumbs up from Trump himself. Even though McMaster won the battle, to put it in Higginsian terms, the war continues. And it seems as likely as not, on the FP’s reporting, that McMaster will eventually lose.

So as we scratch our heads asking why President Trump refuses to denounce white suprmacists, let’s not forget that this is an embattled White House that appears to view the ‘Alt-Right’ as his only real allies. Might that have something to do with his refusal to denounce them despite the political costs he’s incurring for not doing so? They’re his only friends.

And one quick quibble with Marshall’s characterization of millieu of figures that have been promoting this “liberals and Islamists united in Cultural Marxism” worldview. Specifically this section regarding Frank Gaffney:

…
As Peter Beinart noted earlier this year, most mainstream Republicans have treated Gaffney like a crank for years. (Indeed, he’s for years fought a nitwit battle to expel Grover Norquist from the conservative movement because Gaffney claims Norquist is a Muslim Brotherhood agent or fellow traveler.) But he’s viewed as a major thinker and adviser in the Trump White House. And Mike Flynn was deeply under his influence. Indeed, in 2016 Flynn co-authored a book with Michael Ledeen, a comparable though somewhat more obscure figure. Ledeen is a different, with his own distinct though no less crazy conspiracy theories largely tied to radical Islamist, terrorist and simply anti-American groups. The upshot is that Flynn was totally down with and in the Frank Gaffney nutbag and he staffed the Trump world with people of the same mindset. A lot of them are still there.
…

But this is where we are: when we step back and “study the situation”, the situation appears to be one where a worldview best left to a racist cult is guiding the White House. And that White House is, in turn, effectively defending via omission a group of neo-Nazis the day after one of them ran down a crowd of anti-racist protestors. And if we step back further we find that same kind of worldview capturing the imagination of a significant segment of white American conservatives. And Europe too when you look at the rise of white nationalism there. And of course the Muslim world when you look at ongoing domination of hyper-conservative strains of Islam and groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and theocratic monarchies. And don’t forget North Korea. It’s an entire nation run by an insular cult that views the rest of the world as an existential threat. In other worlds, pretty much wherever you look around the globe you’re going to find reactionary totalitarian identitarian groups that view the rest of the world as an existential “others” threat. And if we’re going to find a real existential threat anywhere that’s where it is: groups that can’t live peacefully with others and refuse to humanize others.

But what do we do about this? Virginia governor Terry McCoullough made an important point during his address to the public after the neo-Nazi car attack on a crowd of anti-fascist protestors and hte ‘Unify the Right’ torchlight march. He called for them to “go home”, and said Virginia isn’t a commonwealth that welcomes them. And the United States isn’t doesn’t have space for them. It was an important rebuke made all the more important bye the President’s silence. But it still raises the question: where do they go? And the answer is the same answer to the question of “what do we do with [insert totalitarian identitarian group here]?” And that answer is to be super welcoming when they snap out of it and become non-totalitarian identitarians and otherwise continue to be unwelcoming. They won’t be deported or anything. Just unwelcome when they express hateful views.

But that’s probably not going to be adequate. So how about we counter the systematic dehumanization of “others” by public recognizing that the dehumanization of “others” is an extremely “human” thing to do. Tragically, but that’s how it is. Throughout history it’s been pervasive and enduring. Across time and cultures. Monstrous acts and ideologies are all too human. And those help captive by such views aren’t monsters. They’re human captives of monstrous ideologies. It’s sadly human to get caught up in such ideologies, but also human to experience an epiphany, snap out of it, and move past it. Think of the former members of the Kingston clan. They were die-hard believers who managed to escape. It wasn’t easy, but they did it. And that whole arc of experience, believing in a hate cult and learning to move past it, is a very human experience. On top of that, it’s not just a relief when someone escapes from a hate cult but it’s actually really quite remarkable. Way to go! For real, it’s an amazing and impressive achievement. So how about we celebrate that and make it very clear that we recognize that those trapped in hate cults can be just a handful of personal epiphanies away from becoming great people who will be welcome anywhere. At least anywhere that isn’t a hate cult. Would recognizing the awesomeness of escaping from a hate cult help our overall situation?

Sure, it’s not fair that the side that promotes peace and equality and diversity and trying to empathize and humanize others should be forced to repeatedly ‘turn the other cheek’ when it comes to finding a common path forward with groups dedicated to dehumanization of others and, in many cases, their eventual extermination. But that’s how it is when you’re forced to fight for a more empathetic society and an end to thoughtless heartlessness. It comes with the territory. And it’s important to note that it’s relatively new territory when it comes to trying to create a society that isn’t simply dominated by some group but is instead thoughtfully based on a real ‘Golden rule’ paradigm. We know societies like North Korea or Nazi Germany can exist and have always existed. Humans are clearly capable of that. But this whole tolerance thing, a society that looks past superficialities and truly embraces The Golden Rule and priorities the humanization of “others”, this is new. And largely untested because there’s always been a large swath of society that never agreed with that vision. So how about we create a national project that actually celebrates the humanization of “others” and moving past hating, including hating the haters. Humanizing the haters. Not as models to follow but as real people trapped in hate cults they didn’t create but someone fell into or were born into. A celebration of the act of shedding previously held bigotries, in effect being “born again”. Could a movement of born again ex-haters have any impact?

Similarly, how about developing a a sense of “White Pride” that’s pride in white society overcoming white supremacy. And mysogyny. And homophobia. And all the other unjustified horrible habits that have infested societies throughout history. And add it to “[insert group’s label here] Pride” that celebrates that group’s various obstacles that they’ve overcome to also achieve a real “Golden Rule” culture. The kind of culture one might associate with a super nice pacifist hippie who loves everyone, as long as they’re not mean. And if they are mean the super nice pacifist hippie loves them in a ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ way and humanizes them. Totalitarian identitarian movements like the ‘Alt-Right’ neo-Nazis explicitly don’t have a space for non-whites. They can’t possibly be a viable worldview for the real world unless it involves real world mass genocide. Which is part of their long-term vision. And the rest of the totalitarian identitarian worldviews of the world are the same way. It’s like extra-psycho Highlander scenario played out on a tribal level, where it’s either one totalitarian identitarian movement wins or humanity obliterates itself. In which case the rest of life on Earth wins. And that leaves and global community of tolerant progressive multi-cultural societies where all the participating cultures are nice and generally tolerant and Golden-rule-ish as the only viable vision for a future that doesn’t destroy itself. Being nice isn’t just nice. It’s logistically the only viable modality in a globalized world filled with advanced technology and a capacity for groups to destroy each other.

So if people like Mike Cernovich are going wage meme warfare propagating hate cult ideology, how about a counter meme campaign celebrating the awesome logistical utility of empathy and general niceness and how much stronger it makes any society. And how much nicer it is. Because many people appear to have forgotten or never figured out that life would be much better for everyone if we dropped the hate cult ideas. So a pro-niceness meme campaign is sadly necessary.

And make it very clear to to President Trump that he will be legitimately celebrated if he sheds his ‘Alt-Right’ neo-Nazi sympathies and uses his leadership position to create a real culture of niceness. The best moments in history involve overcoming the worst moments in history and the US is having a pretty bad moment. Trump has a real opportunity here after leading us to this horrible place. He said he loves “all the people of our country,” and called for Americans of different races and backgrounds to remember their shared Americanness in his remarks after the attack. If he actually demonstrated that by jettisoning all the Nazi-sympthizers like Steve Bannon or Sebastian Gorka from the White House and them lead a Presidential commission on Hate or that had an emphasis on white supremacy (since that’s the dominant hate movement in terms of raw numbers), he could end up being a wildly successful president. At least successful on race relations. He still might blow up the world in other ways but at least he would have a ‘healing the racial divide’ feather in his presidential cap. And sure, the odds of this happening are extremely low, but that’s the point: making a formal offer to avowed racists who will probably go to their graves avowed racists that, hey, the grass really is greener on the nice side and you’re more than welcome to come on over. No hard feelings. Hugs? It’ll be a “born again” thing and all will be forgiven basically. Even Bannon and Gorka could join in as long as they denounce their hate cult-ish ways. Wouldn’t it be so much more fun if we all just kind of got along? A “born again” nice Trump could save his presidency and help us all get along by by ditching the neo-Nazis and saving America from polarizing peril. His silence doesn’t bode well but it’s ultimately up to him. But it’s up to the rest of us to let him and the rest of the Nazi sympathizers in high and low places that if they have whatever personal epiphany experience that’s required to snap out of their hate cult worldviews, they will be totally welcome on Team Nice. Healing hugs anyone? Especially for Trump if he joinst Team Nice soon. It would be quite a twist for his presidency.

But as is, it appears that much like how the Elders in the Kingston clan paint a picture of a corrupt world besieging their community, the ‘Alt-Right’ and the rest of the far-right media universe has been busy selling its audience of primarily conservative white Christians prone to anti-government sentiments that liberals/progressives and the Muslim Brotherhood and presumably George Soros and the Illuminati and etc are all teaming up against them. So making it clear that they are trapped in a hate cult dynamic and that everyone will be very understanding when they snap out of it could be a useful path forward. Or perhaps totally useless but at least we tried. And should presumably keep trying as is required of Team Nice. More hugs are clearly in order.

And who knows, if we even found an effective ‘nice culture’ that actually acted as an epiphany catalyst for members of hate cults and encouraged them join in on the welcoming niceness, it might work for all sorts of other hate cults, like the Muslim Brotherhood. Jewish extremists, or any other hate group that’s clearly terrified of the rest of the world. Maybe we’ll finally find a way out of the North Korean mass cult nuclear blackmail situation. Or at least a significant part of a much larger solution.

Discussion

4 comments for “So You’ve Got a Hate Cult Problem: Living With the Kingston Klan and its ‘Alt-Right’ Cousins”

Given that the purported purpose for the “Unite the Right” rally was to protect ‘White heritage’ by preventing the removal of a statue or Robert E. Lee, it’s worth recall that the kinds of figures that groups like this revere aren’t limited to Civil War figures. For instance, Andrew “the weev” Auernheimer has been calling for a crowdfunding campaign to create a a permanent statue for a grave memorializing Timothy McVeigh.

So will the McVeigh monument become part of the ‘Alt-Right’ neo-Nazis’ white heritage that future ‘Alt-Right’ torchlight mobs rally around and protect from removal? We’ll sadly probably find out:

The Southern Poverty Law Center
Hatewatch

McVeigh Worship: The New Extremist Trend

June 27, 2017
Bill Morlin

In extremist circles, there appears to be a bump of interest in Timothy James McVeigh.

Yes, that Timothy McVeigh. The guy who used a Ryder truck to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, killing 168 innocent children and adults and wounding more than 600 others.

His act 22 years ago, for those who may have forgotten, was the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

McVeigh was convicted of terrorism and executed just three months before those attacks.

His name and heinous crime are not forgotten, nor should they be, while there seems to be a growing admiration for McVeigh in some extremist circles. One militia honcho even likened McVeigh to Jesus Christ.

Check out these recent mentions of McVeigh:

In mid-May, police in Tampa, Florida, responded to the scene of a double-murder involving young, self-described neo-Nazis.

Brandon Russell, who shared the apartment with the murder suspect, was charged with possession of bomb-making materials and chemicals, including ammonium nitrate – the same kind of material used by McVeigh.

In Russell’s bedroom at the apartment he shared with the murder suspect and the two slain neo-Nazis, police found a framed photograph of Timothy McVeigh. Russell, who’s in custody, hasn’t publicly explained that fascination.

…

Then on May 26, Jeremy Christian, who held extremist views, went on a rampage in Portland, Oregon, slashing the throats and killing two men who attempted to come to the aid of two women Christian was harassing.

Just a month earlier, on the anniversaryof McVeigh’s deadly act of terrorism, Christian praised the Oklahoma City bomber in a Facebook post. “May all the Gods Bless Timothy McVeigh — a TRUE PATRIOT!!!” Christian wrote.

More recently, neo-Nazi Andrew ‘Weev’ Auernheimer, who writes for the racist web site “Daily Stormer,” said he was serious in proposing a crowd-funding account to raise money to build a “permanent monument” in a memorial grove honoring McVeigh.

“Think of it, a gigantic bronze statue of Timothy McVeigh poised triumphantly atop a Ryder truck, arms raised as if to form an Algiz rune from his body, with a plaque that states the honest truth,” Auernheimer wrote. “Nothing would be a greater insult to these pizza-party guarding federal swine than a permanent monument honoring [McVeigh’s] journey to Valhalla or Fólkvangr atop the piles of their corpses.”

“I am not joking,” Auernheimer wrote. “This should be done. Imagine how angry it would make people.”

Last year, during the illegal occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon by antigovernment figurehead Ammon Bundy and his militia followers, Norm Olson, another long-time militia activist and leader, made ominous public comments about McVeigh.

“The battle for the rights of the people rages on and it should be assumed that lone wolf patriots may be planning another response to the central government’s abuses,” Olson wrote. He claimed federal agents “murdered” Bundy associate LaVoy Finicum, inciting Patriots, during the 2016 refuge occupation.

“Once the fuse is lit, it will be hard to extinguish,” Olson said. “There’s a place that we all should think about: Oklahoma City.”

Two days later, Olson, who has been active in militia groups in Michigan and Alaska, said he was ready to tell members of Congress that “Timothy McVeigh DIED FOR YOUR SINS!!!!!!!!!”

It’s worth remembering that Olson had a unique glimpse of McVeigh. He and Oklahoma bombing co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, attended a meeting of the Michigan Militia, which Olson founded in 1994, a year before the Oklahoma City bombing.

“Anger and frustration create a personal vendetta,” Olson wrote last year, claiming that the U.S. government’s “case against Tim McVeigh was based on his motive.”

“His motive was VENDETTA, retaliation, retribution, eye-for-eye ..f. call it what you want, but there will be blood … maybe not right away, but soon,” Olson’s said in his ominous public warning.

Apparently referring to McVeigh, Olson said there are other “Patriots out there who “want to be remembered” and are coming to the realization that THERE IS NO JUSTICE … IT IS JUST US!

Of course, McVeigh may never be as popular as other extremist and far-right heroes and memes – – the swastika, the burning cross, Adolf Hitler, Pepe the Frog, George Lincoln Rockwell, the numbers 88 and 14 words, the KKK blood-drop cross, William Pierce.

But the question remains, why would anyone romanticize a modern-day, extremist serial killer and terrorist?

Tom Pyszczynski, a professor of psychology at University of Colorado who has written about the psychological makeup of extremists, said he believes only a “relatively small number of people” are enthralled with McVeigh.

“The psychological, social, economic and political forces that lead some Americans to idolize McVeigh are the same as those that lead disenfranchised or disillusioned young people in other parts of the world to idolize Osama bin Laden or ISIS,” Pyszczynski told Hatewatch.

“They see them [McVeigh, et al] as heroes who stand up for people like them,” said Pyszczynski, who co-developed and tested a “terror management theory,” dealing with the role of death in life and the role that meaning and self-esteem play in managing the fear of death.

“Of course, the specifics of the issues and lives of the people who follow ISIS and those who idolize McVeigh are different, but beneath the surface it usually boils down to a feeling that one’s people are disrespected and mistreated, that one’s way of life is under siege from powerful forces, and that the world as they know it has gotten out of control,” the university psychologist said.

“All people crave meaning in life and a sense of personal or group heroism to protect them from their deepest fears,” he said, explaining that ultimately boils down to the “facts of life, involving death and vulnerability.”

But some people, he said, aren’t able to find this in their worlds. So they look elsewhere, to radical fringe groups, like ISIS for some, or white nationalist groups for others.

“These groups typically have heroes who are idolized as standing up to powerful forces and if they die in that fight, they are considered martyrs,” Pyszczynski said.

Clark McCauley, a research professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, offered similar brief views about those individuals enchanted with McVeigh.

“McVeigh is … a symbol of resistance and a hero for those who hate and fear the U.S. Government,” McCauley told Hatewatch. “This includes a wide range of people, some who see themselves as neo-Nazis and some who do not.”

McVeigh’s bombing plan generally followed a fictional account of a race war depicted in the “Turner Diaries,” a novel written by William Pierce, a one-time college professor who went on to lead the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi hate group.

McCauley said he doesn’t personally believe McVeigh was a neo-Nazi, so “he can therefore be a hero for many different anti-government groups.”

Pyszczynski, who teaches at the Colorado Springs university, said people “who feel their way of life is under siege” identify with “heroes” like McVeigh.

“So radical ideologies, whether they be Islamist or white nationalist, are appealing to people who struggle to find meaning and a sense of personal value in their own lives and view another group as the repository of evil against which they must fight to reclaim that meaning and value,” he said.

““Think of it, a gigantic bronze statue of Timothy McVeigh poised triumphantly atop a Ryder truck, arms raised as if to form an Algiz rune from his body, with a plaque that states the honest truth,” Auernheimer wrote. “Nothing would be a greater insult to these pizza-party guarding federal swine than a permanent monument honoring [McVeigh’s] journey to Valhalla or Fólkvangr atop the piles of their corpses.””

That’s right, for the far-right someone like Timothy McVeigh is a heroic figure worthy of a giant bronze statue. Would that statue be considered protected ‘white heritage’ by the “Unite the Right” folks once it gets built? It seems like its just a matter of time before someone builds a statue of the guy Well given the cult-like status McVeigh has on the far-right. So that’s an unpleasant future conflict over American ‘white heritage’ that we’re going to have to deal with. Although not as unpleasant as the other forms for enduring McVeigh worship:

KFOR.com

Man arrested by FBI agents after allegedly planning to bomb building in downtown Oklahoma City

KFOR-TV & K. Querry
08/14/2017

OKLAHOMA CITY – Federal officials say that a 23-year-old Oklahoma man has been arrested after allegedly planning to blow up a bomb in downtown Oklahoma City.

According to a criminal complaint, the FBI arrested 23-year-old Jerry Drake Varnell at 1 a.m. on Aug. 12 after he allegedly attempted to detonate what he believed to be an explosives-laden van he had parked in an alley next to BancFirst in downtown Oklahoma City.

The complaint alleges that Varnell initially wanted to blow up the Federal Reserve Building in Washington, D.C. with a device that was similar to the one used in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Court documents claim that Varnell was upset with the government, and his plans got the attention of law enforcement.

An undercover FBI agent posed as a person who could help him with the bombing.

According to the complaint, Varnell identified BancFirst as the target, helped assemble the device, loaded it into a van and drove it to the alley by the bank.

In fact, officials say that Varnell even dialed a number on a cell phone that he believed would trigger the explosion. Authorities say they also found a statement that he planned to post to social media after the explosion.

However, officials say that the device was actually inert and the public was not in any danger.

“There was never a concern that our community’s safety or security was at risk during this investigation,” said Kathryn Peterson, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Oklahoma. “I can assure the public, without hesitation, that we had Varnell’s actions monitored every step of the way.”

Varnell is charged with attempting to use explosives to destroy a building in interstate commerce.

“I commend the devoted work of the FBI and our state law enforcement partners in ensuring that violent plots of this kind never succeed,” said Mark A. Yancey, United States Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma.

If convicted, he would face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison.

“The complaint alleges that Varnell initially wanted to blow up the Federal Reserve Building in Washington, D.C. with a device that was similar to the one used in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.”

And this planned domestic terror attack in Oklahoma City was supposed to happen at 1 am on Saturday, the evening the “Unite the Right” torchlight marches started. On top of be really horrible, it’s just the latest sign that the far-right really, really, really loves Timothy McVeigh and thinks he was just a great, heroic figure in American history.

When you’re living with a not-very-crypto-fascist President in the White House, there are good days and there are those days. And as is evident from the effusive praise President Trump received today over his ongoing remarks on the car attack at a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, VA, this was one of those days:

Former top Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke praised President Donald Trump on Tuesday for his latest remarks regarding the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend, which was organized ostensibly as a protest of the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Duke, in his praise of Trump, re-posted a video of the President wondering aloud if the removal of monuments to Confederate figures would end up with the removal of monuments dedicated to early American slaveholders, including Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

The video also included Trump saying not everyone at the rally on the side of white supremacists was a neo-Nazi or a white nationalist.

“You had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned, totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?” Trump said in the video re-posted by Duke. “And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”

“Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had trouble-makers, and you see them come with the black outfits, and with the helmets, and with the baseball bats,” Trump added. “You had a lot of bad people in the other group, too.”

White supremacists on Tuesday praised President Donald Trump for his return to equivocal rhetoric blaming “both sides” for violence that erupted over the weekend at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

White supremacist leader Richard Spencer praised Trump’s statement, made during an off-the-rails press conference at Trump Tower in Manhattan, as “fair and down to earth.”

After Trump read a curt statement Monday denouncing white supremacists and hate groups by name, Spencer insisted he wasn’t being “serious,” and celebrated his reversal on Tuesday.

Bradley Dean Griffin, a white nationalist who blogs under the pen name “Hunter Wallace” at Occidental Dissent, said Trump’s amended rhetoric was “better.”

“The facts about must be filtering out now,” he tweeted. “He is all over the place but this is much better.”
…

Neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer was not available on Tuesday after it was booted off several web hosting services and moved to the so-called Dark Web, part of the internet that is not indexed by search engines.

According to the Chicago Tribune, it nevertheless weighed in with an article titled, “Trump Defends Charlottesville Nazis Against Jew Media Lies, Condemns Antifa Terrorists.”

Yep, there was a lot of celebrate today…if you happened to be a neo-Nazi. After all, thanks to Trump’s press conference that the white supremacists are all raving about, the President of the United States has now put the neo-Nazis and those who show up to protest them largely on the same moral ground. They’re both ‘bad’ groups, that he condemns. He also fretting about the removal of Robert E. Lee’s statue, asking if George Washington and Thomas Jefferson statues were next. So, yes Robert E. Lee is apparently on the same history footing as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson according to the President of the United States. It was that kind of day:

Talking Points Memo
Livewire

‘What About The Alt-Left?’ Trump Lashes Out In Impromptu Press Conference

By Matt Shuham
Published August 15, 2017 6:21 pm

President Donald Trump on Tuesday erased any ground he had gained in denouncing white supremacist groups by reverting to his old habits: False equivalencies and equivocation that left white supremacists cheering.

In an angry press conference at Trump Tower, the President said that not everyone who rallied on the side of white supremacists was worthy of condemnation, and said that he needed the two full days before denouncingwhite white supremacist groups in order to “get the facts.”

These were Trump’s main claims during the impromptu press conference:

Not everyone at the rally was a white supremacist

Though the rally was organized by white supremacist groups and ostensibly meant to protest the removal of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, Trump claimed some protesters on the side of the white supremacists were innocently and justifiably exercising their rights.

“I have condemned many different groups,” he said. “But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee.”

“I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned, totally,” he added. “But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, OK? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”

Trump said some pro-Confederate protesters were “protesting, very quietly, the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee” on Friday night. “You had a lot of people in that group who were there to innocently protest — and very legally protest. I don’t know if you know, they had a permit, the other group didn’t have a permit. So I only tell you this, there are two sides to a story.”

Trump also criticized what he called the “alt-left.”

“What about the alt-left that came charging at them?” he asked separately. “What about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt? What about this? What about the fact that they came charging – they came charging with clubs in their hands swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do.”

He added: “You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now.”

I was waiting to ‘get the facts’ before condemning white supremacist groups

On Saturday, Trump condemned “many sides” for stirring the violence that had left one counter-protester dead at the time of his statement. A man who had earlier been photographed with white supremacists had allegedly rammed his car into a crowd.

“I didn’t wait long, I didn’t wait long, I didn’t wait long,” Trump said Tuesday, referring to his specific condemnation a day earlier of white supremacist groups. “I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct, not make a quick statement. The statement I made on Saturday, the first statement, was a fine statement, but you don’t make statements that direct unless you know the fact.”

“It takes a little while to get the facts,” he continued. “You still don’t know the facts. And it’s a very, very important process to me. And it’s a very important statement. So I don’t want to go quickly and just make a statement for the sake of making a political statement. I want to know the facts.”

“In fact, the young woman who I hear is a fantastic young woman … her mother wrote me and said, through, I guess, Twitter, social media, the nicest things,” Trump said. “And I very much appreciated that. I hear she was a fine, really, actually, an incredible young woman. But her mother, on Twitter, thanked me for what I said. And honestly, if the press were not fake and if it was honest, the press would have said what I said was very nice. But unlike you and unlike the media, before I make a statement, I like to know the facts.”

Taking down Confederate statues is a slippery slope

Copping a common talking point from the far-right, Trump argued that tearing down monuments to Confederate leaders could lead to the removal of statues of America’s Founding Fathers.

“George Washington was a slave owner,” Trump said. “Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down — excuse me. Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson?”

Returning to the point later, Trump made the connection explicit: “This week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week, and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”

“Returning to the point later, Trump made the connection explicit: “This week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week, and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?””

President Trump’s war with CNN went off the rails Tuesday morning after he retweeted an image of a Trump train running over a CNN reporter, then quickly deleted it after the meme sparked criticism as inappropriate just days after the Charlottesville violence.

Trump was in the middle of his usual morning tweetstorm when he sent the cartoon image — posted by a supporter who added, “Nothing can stop the #TrumpTrain!!” — to his nearly 36 million followers.

Trump RT'd this pic showing a CNN journalist hit by a train days after a white nationalist ran his car into activists, killed Heather Heyer. pic.twitter.com/tWjdoE70AS— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 15, 2017

The president quickly deleted his handiwork but not before the original tweet had been retweeted hundreds of times and was captured on screen shots by journalists and activists.

Trump’s promotion of the image came three days after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville turned into a violent clash between the supremacists and counterprotesters. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed and 19 others injured when a driver slammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters. A 20-year old man, who has reportedly espoused neo-Nazi views, has been charged with second-degree murder in the case. Two police officers also died when their helicopter crashed.

Trump did not immediately condemn the hate groups behind the “Unite the Right” rally, drawing criticism from Democrats and some Republicans. On Monday, the president attempted to make amends and denounced the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis by name, while calling white supremacists “repugnant to all that we hold dear as Americans.”

But even as he attempted to clarify his views, Trump seemed eager to blame the backlash on reporters, in particular CNN. As the president was wrapping up a photo op related to international trade Monday, CNN correspondent Jim Acosta asked him why he had waited so long to condemn the hate groups by name and why he had not answered questions from reporters.

If the president awoke Tuesday thinking his Twitter account would help him regain control of his political narrative, he was mistaken, however, as he also misfired in retweeting a man calling him a “fascist.”

A user named Mike Holden was replying to a Fox News story that said Trump had told the network in an interview that he was considering issuing a a presidential pardon for former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was found guilty of defying a judge’s order to halt traffic patrols on suspected undocumented immigrants. “He’s a fascist, so not unusual,” Holden wrote, only to find himself retweeted by the 45th president of the United States.

Holden has posted a rapid-fire series of tweets and retweets over the past days on British politics and the fallout from the violence in Charlottesville, including a retweet of a cartoon in the Guardian newspaper depicting the White House topped by a KKK-style pointed hood. His Twitter page also has various tributes to Bernard Kenney, a British man who attempted to subdue a far-right gunman who fatally shot British parliament member Jo Cox last year. Kenney, who was stabbed by the attacker Thomas Mair, died Monday.

…

Holden called the Charlottesville rally a “fascist march.”

“For a president to still be at Bedminster playing golf and not come out and say more? From a large catalogue of things he’s done, it seemed among the worst,” he said.

Holden quickly set a screen shot of Trump’s retweet as his Twitter background image and boasted about the endorsement — kind of — in his bio on the social media site.

“Officially Endorsed by the President of the United States,” he wrote. “I wish that were a good thing.”

Late Monday, Trump also retweeted a post from the Twitter account linked to right-wing provocateur Jack Posobiec, a Trump supporter known for fanning conspiracy theories, including the infamous “Pizzagate” rumors of child trafficking. Posobiec’s tweet — retweeted by Trump and not taken down — linked to a story from an ABC affiliate and read: “Meanwhile: 39 shootings in Chicago this weekend, 9 deaths. No national media outrage. Why is that?”

Posobiec, a former Navy Reserve intelligence officer, had worked for right-wing website the Rebel. Posobiec gained national attention during “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory that claimed Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief harbored a child sex ring in a pizza restaurant in Washington. The Internet-fueled falsehood led a gunman in December to fire an assault-style rifle as he searched the pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong.

“President Trump’s war with CNN went off the rails Tuesday morning after he retweeted an image of a Trump train running over a CNN reporter, then quickly deleted it after the meme sparked criticism as inappropriate just days after the Charlottesville violence.”

And then there was the retweet os an Alt-Right personality about crime in Chicago over the weekend by that was clearly intended to deflect attention from the neo-Nazi rally by directing attention to crime in predominantly African American neighborhoods and suggest a parallel with a neo-Nazi hate rally that resulted in a domestic terror attack:

…
Late Monday, Trump also retweeted a post from the Twitter account linked to right-wing provocateur Jack Posobiec, a Trump supporter known for fanning conspiracy theories, including the infamous “Pizzagate” rumors of child trafficking. Posobiec’s tweet — retweeted by Trump and not taken down — linked to a story from an ABC affiliate and read: “Meanwhile: 39 shootings in Chicago this weekend, 9 deaths. No national media outrage. Why is that?”

Posobiec, a former Navy Reserve intelligence officer, had worked for right-wing website the Rebel. Posobiec gained national attention during “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory that claimed Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief harbored a child sex ring in a pizza restaurant in Washington. The Internet-fueled falsehood led a gunman in December to fire an assault-style rifle as he searched the pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong.

White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was reportedly “thrilled” and “proud” after President Donald Trump’s comments Tuesday that not everyone who attended a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend was worthy of condemnation.

During an impromptu press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower Tuesday, Trump said “I think there’s blame on both sides” — both the white supremacists’ and counter-protesters’ — for the weekend’s turmoil, and that not everyone who protested the statue’s removal deserved criticism.

“You had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned, totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, OK?” he said. “And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”

Many in the White House have communicated to reporters — off the record — that Trump’s statements made them uncomfortable. For Bannon, at least according to unnamed sources familiar with his opinion, the opposite is true.

An unnamed “friend” of Bannon’s told Politico the adviser was “thrilled” with the remarks.

And an unnamed source “close” to Bannon told Bloomberg he was “proud” of Trump’s performance.

Bannon has a history with many of the groups and ideologies present at Saturday’s rally, which descended into mayhem and violence and resulted in the death of one counter-protester after a man who had earlier been photographed with white supremacists allegedly rammed his car into a crowd.

“We’re the platform for the alt-right,” Bannon boasted to Mother Jones in July 2016, referring to Breitbart News, the conservative platform he used to run before joining Trump’s campaign for President, and eventually, Trump’s White House.

“Many in the White House have communicated to reporters — off the record — that Trump’s statements made them uncomfortable. For Bannon, at least according to unnamed sources familiar with his opinion, the opposite is true.”

Yep, Bannon wasn’t just “thrilled”. He was “proud”:

…
An unnamed “friend” of Bannon’s told Politico the adviser was “thrilled” with the remarks.

And an unnamed source “close” to Bannon told Bloomberghe was “proud” of Trump’s performance.
…

Presumably that was ‘White pride’ filling Bannon’s heart, although maybe it was some sort of ‘Machiavelli divide-and-conquer campaign strategist pride’. Or maybe a bit of both. We don’t get to know. It’s one of life’s mysteries.

No word in the Trump lexicon is as tread-worn as “unprecedented.” But members of the president’s staff, stunned and disheartened, said they never expected to hear such a voluble articulation of opinions that the president had long expressed in private. National Economic Council Chairman Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin, who are Jewish, stood by uncomfortably as the president exacerbated a controversy that has once again engulfed a White House in disarray.

There you have it. This is Trump, a man whose deepest political impulses are tied to racial grievance and a desire for revenge, a desire to place the deserving and white back at the top of the racial hierarchy. People get caught up on whether or not people are willing to call Trump a ‘racist’. Of course, he’s a racist. But that doesn’t tell us enough. Lots of people dislike blacks or Jews, don’t want to live near them, etc. But many, likely most with racist attitudes, do not embrace a politics driven by racial grievance. Trump’s politics are about racial grievance. It’s not latent or peripheral but rather central. That’s different and it’s worse. It is one of the few consistent themes in his politics going back many, many years.

It is worth noting this other passage in the piece: “Mr. Trump prides himself on an unapologetic style he learned from his father, Fred Trump, a New York City housing developer, and Roy Cohn, a combative lawyer who served as an aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.” Quite true. One might also add though that both men, from profoundly different backgrounds and life experiences, were dyed-in-the-wool racists.

The earlier passage from the Times tells us explicitly what should be clear from watching the consistency of Trump’s public actions. What we saw today is the real Trump. Most of White House ‘comms’ appears to be a matter of keeping this real Trump in check or at least served up in palatable morsels rather than all at once.

“A voluble articulation of opinions that the president had long expressed in private.”

We can infer what stands behind a person’s public statements if we’ve seen them enough, under different pressures and in different contexts. Trump’s repeated expressions of sympathy for racist activists, refusals to denounce racist activists, coddling and appointments of racist activists can only really mean one thing: that he instinctively sympathizes with them and indeed is one. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me 80 million times, I need to seriously consider what the fuck is wrong with me.

Again, there’s no reasonable, alternative explanation.

I’m reminded of Ptolemy’s ancient, geocentric model of the solar system, which was only superseded by the Copernican, heliocentric model in the 16th century. If we knew nothing more than what we see when we looked in the sky, it makes perfect sense to think the sun revolves around the Earth. We see it happen every day! But when you begin to make detailed observations of the motions of the planets, the sun and the stars, you are forced to posit a series of increasingly intricate and heroic assumptions to make everything fit together: there are orbits within orbits, little side wanderings and detours to make everything fit together.

Once you put the sun at the center of the solar system, everything gets much, much simpler. The data all falls into place without any big heroic or far-fetched assumptions.

The simpler explanation that accounts for all the available facts is not always right. But as Occam noted, it is always to be preferred. What we need is a Copernican revolution in our understanding of Trumpism, or at least some of us need it. The breakthrough for Copernicus was in positing the unimaginable, indeed the terrifying possibility that the Earth is not the center of the universe but rather a peripheral, secondary celestial body. Once you accept that, a lot falls into place.

With Trump, he has a revanchist racist politics because he is a revanchist racist. Once you accept that, a lot falls into place. All the heroic and increasingly nonsensical perambulations of misunderstandings, inexperience, missed opportunities, stubbornness and all the rest are not needed. It all falls into place.

…

I confess I had a small degree of surprise that the events of the weekend – as horrifying and tragic as they are – have had quite the effect on people they seem to have had. This is not to diminish them. It is only to say that I do not think they should be so surprising. I don’t think they should amount to a revelation that shifts our basic understanding of things. We have if not a growing white supremacist movement in the US at least an increasingly vocal and emboldened one. They both made Trump possible and have in turn been energized and emboldened by his success. He reacts this way because he is one of them. He is driven by the same view of the world, the same animus and grievances. What we’ve seen over the last five days is sickening and awful. The house is on fire. But it was on fire a week ago. It’s been on fire since November. The truth is indeed unimaginable and terrifying. But we need to accept the full truth of it if we are going to be able to save our country.

“With Trump, he has a revanchist racist politics because he is a revanchist racist. Once you accept that, a lot falls into place. All the heroic and increasingly nonsensical perambulations of misunderstandings, inexperience, missed opportunities, stubbornness and all the rest are not needed. It all falls into place.”

Yep, while it’s entirely possible for a politicians to cater to and fuel racists politics for purely self-serving cynical reasons, when you examine Trump’s long publicly available track record that long-predates his political life we see one indication after another that Trump himself really is racist. And brought up to be that way:

…
There you have it. This is Trump, a man whose deepest political impulses are tied to racial grievance and a desire for revenge, a desire to place the deserving and white back at the top of the racial hierarchy. People get caught up on whether or not people are willing to call Trump a ‘racist’. Of course, he’s a racist. But that doesn’t tell us enough. Lots of people dislike blacks or Jews, don’t want to live near them, etc. But many, likely most with racist attitudes, do not embrace a politics driven by racial grievance. Trump’s politics are about racial grievance. It’s not latent or peripheral but rather central. That’s different and it’s worse. It is one of the few consistent themes in his politics going back many, many years.

It is worth noting this other passage in the piece: “Mr. Trump prides himself on an unapologetic style he learned from his father, Fred Trump, a New York City housing developer, and Roy Cohn, a combative lawyer who served as an aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.” Quite true. One might also add though that both men, from profoundly different backgrounds and life experiences, were dyed-in-the-wool racists.
…

““Mr. Trump prides himself on an unapologetic style he learned from his father, Fred Trump, a New York City housing developer, and Roy Cohn, a combative lawyer who served as an aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.” Quite true. One might also add though that both men, from profoundly different backgrounds and life experiences, were dyed-in-the-wool racists.”

It’s also worth noting that if Steven Bannon was “thrilled” by Trump’s tirade that suggests that Bannon not only liked the sentiment behind it but also the politics. Don’t forget, he’s Trump’s chief political strategist. And he was “thrilled” by that display that’s sparked outrage across the country. In other words, Bannon apparently approves of the political game of creating a national political litmus test over the question of whether or not Nazis and anti-Nazis are morally equivalent. That’s what Trump was doing, intentionally or unintentionally, and it appears to be a Bannon-approved tactic.

So that’s where we are: a nation a President who apparently can’t help but wear his heart on his sleave. And that heart is filled with racist thought, conspiracy theories, and grievances. Lovely.

It all raises a rather interesting question: While it’s extremely likely that whatever is in Trump’s heart will be taken to the grave. Sadly. But in the spirit of healing it’s probably worth asking if are there any sort of de-radicalization techniques that could be borrowed from the various groups that work on de-progamming die-hard racists and extremists that could somehow be applied remotely that might have a positive impact? And not just on Trump. There’s no doubt plenty of folks in the White House in need of deprogramming: Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka, etc. With all the money the US government has invested in anti-extremism programs, is there anything with a record of success that might work, even if it’s just a tiny chance of success? If so, they’re probably worth trying. And who knows, if it works, we might be able to convince the Trump administration to give back the money it cut for the only group the federal government funds focused on de-radicalizing neo-Nazis:

The Huffington Post

Controversial Trump Aide Katharine Gorka Helped End Funding For Group That Fights White Supremacy
Life After Hate works to de-radicalize neo-Nazis. The Trump administration decided it wasn’t a priority.

By Jessica Schulberg
08/15/2017 08:34 am ET Updated

WASHINGTON – Weeks before a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, led to three deaths and 19 injuries, the Trump administration revoked a grant to Life After Hate, a group that works to de-radicalize neo-Nazis.

The Department of Homeland Security had awarded the group $400,000 as part of its Countering Violent Extremism program program in January, just days before former President Barack Obama left office. It was the only group selected for a grant that focused exclusively on fighting white supremacy. But the grant money was not immediately disbursed.

Trump aides, including Katharine Gorka, a controversial national security analyst known for her anti-Muslim rhetoric, were already working toward eliminating Life After Hate’s grant and to direct all funding toward fighting what the president has described as “radical Islamic terrorism.”

In December, Gorka, then a member of Trump’s transition team, met with George Selim, the DHS official who headed the Countering Violent Extremism program until he resigned last month, and his then-deputy, David Gersten.

Gorka told Selim and Gersten she didn’t agree with the Obama administration’s approach to countering violent extremism – particularly the way the administration had described the threat of extremism, according to Nate Snyder, an Obama administration DHS counterterrorism official who was an adviser on Countering Violent Extremism efforts and was given a readout of the meeting. The Trump administration has repeatedly criticized the previous administration for avoiding terms like “radical Islam” out of concern that it could alienate Muslims in the U.S. and abroad.

“That was sort of foreshadowing what was going to come,” Snyder said of the December meeting.

The day after Trump won the election, Sebastian Gorka said, “I predict with absolute certitude, the jettisoning of concepts such as CVE.”

Once Trump entered the White House in January, the office of then-DHS Secretary John Kelly ordered a full review of the Countering Violent Extremism program. Kelly’s office wanted to re-vet the groups receiving a portion of the $10 million Congress had appropriated for the program — even though DHS had already publicly announced the grant recipients.

While that review was underway, DHS and the FBI warned in an internal intelligence bulletin of the threat posed by white supremacy. White supremacists “were responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016 … more than any other domestic extremist movement,” the two agencies wrote in a May 10 document obtained by Foreign Policy. Members of the white supremacist movement “likely will continue to pose a threat of lethal violence over the next year,” they concluded.

Staffers in the Countering Violent Extremism program have long pushed for it to address threats from domestic terrorists, including white supremacists.

DHS also revoked funding from the Muslim Public Affairs Council, an American Muslim advocacy organization that was told in January it would receive a $393,800 grant to create community resource centers throughout the country.

After publishing its new list of grantees, DHS told Muslim Public Affairs Council that it was now prioritizing organizations that worked with law enforcement. The money that was initially set aside for community-based groups like Muslim Public Affairs Council and Life After Hate will now go to several law enforcement agencies.

“Is this really just a front for targeting the Muslim community?” asked Omar Noureldin, Muslim Public Affairs Council’s vice president. Noureldin is now looking into whether the Trump administration’s use of the Countering Violent Extremism program’s funds violates congressional appropriation intent.

Less than two months after DHS announced it was pulling funding from Life After Hate, Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year old Ohioan, traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia, to join white supremacists armed with long guns, waving Nazi and Confederate flags and protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a local park.

Fields is now accused of ramming a Dodge Challenger into a crowd of pedestrians on Saturday, and has since been charged with second-degree murder for the death of 32-year-old counterprotester Heather Heyer. Dozens of others were injured, and two Virginia state troopers died in a helicopter crash while monitoring the violent demonstration.

Life After Hate was founded by former white supremacists who have renounced the racist ideology and who now help others transition out of hate groups and re-assimilate into society. Christian Piccolini, a former neo-Nazi and a co-founder of the group, told NPR on Sunday he was not surprised by the devastation in Charlottesville.

The white supremacy movement “has been growing, but it’s also been shape-shifting,” Piccolini said. “It’s gone from what we would have considered very open neo-Nazis and skinheads and KKK marching, to now people that look like our neighbors, our doctors, our teachers, our mechanics.”

“And it’s certainly starting to embolden them, because a lot of the rhetoric that’s coming out of the White House today is so similar to what we preached … but in a slightly more palatable way,” he added.

As the violence in Charlottesville unfolded on Saturday, Trump condemned “this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides,” adding that the problem existed during the Obama administration. The president ignored several calls to specifically denounce white supremacists and neo-Nazis who said they were working to fulfill Trump’s campaign promises.

It wasn’t until Monday, two days after the violent rally, that Trump specifically denounced “the [Ku Klux Klan], neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups.”

Trump’s hesitancy to disavow white supremacists echoes his practice of repeatedly dodging questions about David Duke, a former KKK grand wizard who supported Trump, during the 2016 presidential campaign. Facing public pressure, Trump eventually distanced himself from the infamous white supremacist.

Now in the White House, Trump has surrounded himself with an array of people tied to white supremacist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant groups.

Katharine Gorka, now an adviser in the Department of Homeland Security’s policy office, has pushed conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrating the government and media. Sebastian Gorka is a deputy assistant to the president and has described Islam as an inherently violent religion. He argued days before the Charlottesville attack that white supremacy is not “the problem” facing the country.

Stephen Miller, Trump’s speechwriter and policy adviser, has blamed the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on poor immigration enforcement, and accused black students of racial “paranoia.” National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton wrote under a pseudonym that Islam is “incompatible with the modern West,” and that diversity is “a source of weakness, tension, and disunion.”

And Trump himself campaigned for president on the platform of banning Muslims from traveling to the U.S. and building a wall to keep Mexicans out – proposals that won him enthusiastic support from white supremacists.

DHS did not directly respond to a questions about why it cut funding for de-radicalizing neo-Nazis, and whether it views white supremacy as an extremist threat.

Sixteen of the 26 groups that received DHS funding “have applicability to all forms of violent extremism and as such will address the threat of domestic terrorism,” Anna Franko, a DHS spokeswoman, wrote in an email.

“Life After Hate was founded by former white supremacists who have renounced the racist ideology and who now help others transition out of hate groups and re-assimilate into society. Christian Piccolini, a former neo-Nazi and a co-founder of the group, told NPR on Sunday he was not surprised by the devastation in Charlottesville.”

That’s the group that just had its federal funding eliminated: a white supremacist de-programming organization run by ex-white supremacists. And it wasn’t due to eliminating waste or government redundancy since it was the only organization focused exclusively on white supremacists in the entire federal countering violent extremism (CVE) program.

So if there’s any thing we can learn from Life After Hate that might work on persuading the white nationalists in the White House to begin their personal journey of healing we should probably apply those lessons soon. Very soon. Ideally yesterday.

But Stone’s comment also highlights something regarding the controversy that enveloped Donald Trump’s comments on the Nazi car attack in Charlottesvilles and Trump’s repeated attempts to promote a narrative that there’s a big “violent Left”, as opposed to a relatively small network of Antifa and Black Bloc groups that focus their violence on fascists and Nazis: given that the ‘Alt-Right’ and neo-Nazis are openly intent on creating a spiral of violence between Left and Right and want push a narrative of a “violent Left” as part of those efforts to recruit people for an actual neo-Nazi white nationalist insurrection, it’s going to be important for the broader Left to figure out how to address far-left networks like Antifa that are willing to embrace militant tactics directed at Nazis and fascists. There’s sort of a Gandhi question at work. How much should you prepare to defend yourself when the far-right is actively out to pick a fight with left-wing protestors as part of a campaign to create a cycle of violence and depict the Left as violent?

So what on earth is the appropriate response to Nazi attempts to start a cycle of violence given the right-wing media landscape where painting “the Left” as violent is emerging as a permanent narrative in the Trump era? The Nazis are not just a group of horribly bigoted people but also a movement that promoted both organized and leaderless insurrectionary tactics for the purpose of installing a neo-Nazi regime that will enslave or exterminate entire peoples. How do you fight a movement where both their means and ends revolve around starting fights and validating violence as a means of conflict resolution without taking an Antifa approach of saying, “Ok, we’ll use violence against Nazis because they are that awful” and what do you do about groups like Antifa that are playing into that cycle of violence strategy?

Talking Points Memo
Editor’s Blog

Should We Be Punching Nazis?

By Josh Marshall
Published August 28, 2017 1:09 pm

As we’ve seen the alt-right and various white supremacist and fascistic groups grow in prominence if not necessarily numbers in recent years and now be granted renewed prominence and validation from the President, we see a renewed debate about the role of violence in American politics. Specifically, what is the best way and the appropriate way to react to and combat the always menacing and often violent actions of the kind of people we saw protesting in Charlottesville?

A lot of this debate has gone under the rubric of “nazi-punching” after alt-right leader Richard Spencer was cold-cocked at a demonstration on the fringes of the President’s inauguration. It’s also gotten renewed attention because of the growing prominence of small but high-profile groups going under the name of “antifa”. There are a lot of details here. But I want to focus narrowly on what we should think of groups that not only protest racist groups or come prepared to defend themselves against violence from racist groups but see it as their goal to confront these groups on equal terms in street confrontations. In other words, groups that go looking for confrontations and want to get into street brawls.

Before proceeding further, I want to address what I think are some important caveats. As we saw in the days after Charlottesville, President Trump went to great lengths to equate the two groups which met in Charlottesville – his various references to “many sides” and so forth. The most important point to keep in mind here is that the vast majority of the people protesting the white supremacists and Nazis were not violent – either in philosophy or practice. They were there protesting defiantly but peacefully against marchers whose very message was one of menace and threatened violence. Others were prepared for confrontations if the other side became violent but weren’t looking to initiate violence.

On a basic philosophical level, embracing violence to combat political and moral evils like racism and fascism is simply not equivalent to embracing violence to advance these evils. Any liberalism or constitutionalism that is so bloodless that it can’t make these distinctions is too ornate and theoretical to exist in the wild. So the entirety of Trump’s equivalence is false. But again, what should our attitude be towards even small groups who embrace physical confrontations and violence as the way to confront these groups?

I believe that if you look both historically and in practice, when you have widespread street brawling between “good” groups and “bad” groups it almost always ends up being a victory for the fascist groups. This is for a number of reasons. First is that these groups have historically used the presence of civil violence to justify “law and order” crackdowns which usually empower and propagate authoritarian politics. You can already see this, tendentiously, in those hideous NRA video hate screeds. Again, history tells us this and I think it’s close to intuitive: breakdowns of civil peace lead to authoritarian crackdowns, which almost always have a right-wing and often racist valence.

In a related but more general sense, it is precisely the aim of fascistic groups to shift the basis of civic dialog, space and politics from law to violence. To put it another way, they are trying to shift the basis of society and power from law, voting, equality to force, violence and the domination of the most powerful. And in this case we mean power as expressed by the superior ability to wield violence. Once we’ve moved from one to the other, fascists have to a significant degree already won. The Nazis and white supremacists are literally trying to create a “both sides” situation. We should not help them.

Now, a frequent counter this is the argument about the Nazis and how non-violent resistance didn’t save Germany or eventually the Jews or eventually much of the globe which was engulfed in wars triggered by the Nazi party. This argument is both better and worse than it may seem on the surface. Let’s discuss it for a moment.

There’s a voluminous literature, not surprisingly, about what is called the Nazi ‘seizure of power’. A key section of that debate centers on the fact that there was, by and large, no resistance when the Nazis took the formal powers they had gained through the machinery of the Weimar state and used it to create a dictatorship. This wasn’t a drawn out or vague process. It occurred over a matter of months in 1933. It happened fast.

One of the key critiques of what we might call the opposition to Hitler has to do with the German Social Democratic Party, the main party of the non-Communist left. By and large the SPD, still a mass party in Germany, did not resort to extra-constitutional or violent means to resist Hitler’s coup from above. Indeed, there’s at least an argument that the parties of the left and center still constituted the majority. The argument has always been that the SPD, though nominally a Marxist party, was so wedded to constitutionalism and democracy that it was either unable or unwilling to resist the destruction of the Weimar state by extra-constitutional or violent means.

This very simple review leaves out a world of complexity. Again, there’s a vast literature on the Nazi seizure of power, which you can read. I put it out there to note that there is a time when violence and extra-constitutional action is likely the only way to prevent fascism and dictatorship. But, paradoxically, the resort to street violence, political paramilitaries and empowered violence over law is also the surest route to the destruction of democracy and dictatorship. Quite simply, as dire a situation as I think the country’s in, we are not remotely in a position comparable to the Spring of 1933 in Germany. Suggesting otherwise amounts to a grandiose and self-flattering conceit.

Now, hearing this argument you might think I’m arguing for a bloodless “I may disagree with what you say but I’ll fight for your right to say it” argument. It’s not. I actually like seeing Nazis get punched. Nor do I think all views deserve a right of equal hearing in a democratic society. Philosophies that seek to destroy democracy and the rule of law don’t merit equal validation by a democracy. We grant them certain rights because doing so is consistent with a larger system of laws and rights that guarantees a civil society that is the antithesis of what they believe in. Put another way, Nazis deserve to get punched. A few sucker punches here and there probably send a salutary message. But it’s not always wise to give people what they deserve.

I also think that in cases where the police either refuse to protect or are unable to protect the victims of fascist intimidation and violence that there should be defense groups that do so. That is defensive violence in specific situations. And more generally that only presupposes the breakdown of the state and its basic responsibilities which it should be our main goal to avoid.

The entirety of this seems still a largely marginal issue – a few street brawls in different parts of the country in which Nazis come out to march and intimidate and left-wing groups go out to meet them also looking for a fight. This is a tiny, tiny percentage of those counter-protesting these people. And I don’t include here people who simply defend themselves when attacked. But it’s still worth thinking this question through – even at a distance – since we live in troubled times.

Pushing civil society from talk and voting to violence and paramilitaries is what the fascists are trying to accomplish – moving from the rule of law to the rule of force. By every historical standard and also by almost every philosophical one, this is a victory for, if not fascism, then certainly authoritarianism. The answer to Nazis and white supremacists isn’t flowery talk or left-wing paramilitaries. It’s a stronger rule of law and an empowered state behind it. We have our work cut out for us.

“In a related but more general sense, it is precisely the aim of fascistic groups to shift the basis of civic dialog, space and politics from law to violence. To put it another way, they are trying to shift the basis of society and power from law, voting, equality to force, violence and the domination of the most powerful. And in this case we mean power as expressed by the superior ability to wield violence. Once we’ve moved from one to the other, fascists have to a significant degree already won. The Nazis and white supremacists are literally trying to create a “both sides” situation. We should not help them.”

Yep, it is precisely the aim of fascistic groups to shift the basis of civic dialog, space and politics from law to violence. The ends and the means are the same. Although the full “ends” include things like slavery and genocide. Don’t forget, we’re dealing with actual Nazis here. This is the real deal. And that points us towards a possible general stance towards groups like Antifa: It’s acceptable if they engage in violence purely as an act of self-defense when law enforcement is unable or unwilling to intervene. But if they’re showing up for the expressed purpose of street fighting with the Nazis that should be fully condemned. Not because Nazis don’t deserve to get punched, but because getting punched furthers their plans. Violence really needs to be seen as a last resort, and if Antifa or similar groups refuse to recognize that they are being used to further the Nazis’ ambitions they should be fully condemned for playing dumb and playing along with those ambitions. Could that work as an approach to Antifa?

But if there’s some sort of drive to send of a message of, “Ok, Antifa, don’t play into this cycle of violence,” there would have to be a simultaneously emphasis on ensuring law enforcement is ready and willing to intervene when violence breaks out at these types of events and making it clear that that is how society is going to deal with violent extremists: with law enforcement and not street brawls:

…
I also think that in cases where the police either refuse to protect or are unable to protect the victims of fascist intimidation and violence that there should be defense groups that do so. That is defensive violence in specific situations. And more generally that only presupposes the breakdown of the state and its basic responsibilities which it should be our main goal to avoid.

…

“Pushing civil society from talk and voting to violence and paramilitaries is what the fascists are trying to accomplish – moving from the rule of law to the rule of force. By every historical standard and also by almost every philosophical one, this is a victory for, if not fascism, then certainly authoritarianism. The answer to Nazis and white supremacists isn’t flowery talk or left-wing paramilitaries. It’s a stronger rule of law and an empowered state behind it. We have our work cut out for us.”

But in addition to stronger rule of law, what about a campaign to explicitly point out that the ‘Alt Right’ and neo-Nazis behind are actively trying to provoke a violent conflict? Because that’s a pretty good reason for a stronger rule of law…making it specifically stronger for the purpose of addressing a movement planning on weakening rule of law for the purpose of replacing civic dialog with violence as the new normal.

But there’s another key issue that needs to be addressed regarding movements like Antifa, and that’s the fact that people like Jeremy Christian exist. Christian is, of course, the Alt Right lunatic who stabbed two men to death in Portland after they intervened when he began verbally assaulting a Muslim woman on the bus. And who also happened to be a big vocal supporter of Bernie Sanders while simultaneously exhibiting a large number of white supremacist far-right tendencies. Whether or not he was a neo-Nazi infiltrator who consciously decided to give himself a ‘Bernie Bro’ persona for the purpose of furthering a “violent Left” narrative, or if he was a genuinely confused neo-Nazi/’Bernie Bro’ hybrid, he exists and there’s no reason to believe there aren’t plenty of other Jeremy Christians out there who are infiltrating groups like Antifa for the expressed purpose of smearing the Left as ‘violent’. And as long as such people exist any group that wants to take a “we will only use violence to fight the violent” approach is going to be extremely vulnerable to becoming a dupe group in a larger narrative. And people like Jeremy Christian will always exist. It’s one of the many reasons the “we will only use violence to fight the violent” approach politics is so very problematic:

The Oregonian/OregonLive

Who is Jeremy Christian? Facebook shows a man with nebulous political affiliations who hated circumcision and Hillary Clinton

By Lizzy Acker
Updated on June 2, 2017 at 6:44 PM Posted on May 30, 2017 at 4:33 PM

A deep look at the Facebook page of the man who allegedly killed two at the Hollywood MAX stop on Friday reveals shifting political views that often contradicted themselves, though they maintained certain themes throughout, like hating circumcision and Hillary Clinton.

According to Shane Burley, Portland author of the upcoming book “Fascism Today,” that fuzziness is a hallmark of extremism.

“Defined ideological contradictions are pretty normal with white nationalists,” Burley said over the phone Tuesday.

Both men were stabbed in the throat on a MAX train while they attempted to defend two young women from Christian’s racist rant. A third man, Micah Fletcher, 21, was also stabbed in the neck but survived the attack.

On Twitter and other social media, however, people who identify as alt-right are distancing themselves from Christian, calling him a Bernie Sanders supporter. Liberals also refuse to claim him, pointing out that he was also a Donald Trump supporter.

His Facebook page shows a complicated picture. His posts reveal a comic book collector with nebulous political affiliations who above all else seemed to hate circumcision and Hillary Clinton.

“I want a job in Norway cutting off the heads of people that Circumcize Babies….Like if you agree!!!” Christian posted on May 9. That post got 14 shares, and 34 reactions, some of which were laughing and “wow.”

“If you support the cutting of babies genitals in sick tribal rituals in America get off my page,” he wrote in another post. “I don’t care if you are friend of family.”

He went on to suggest that a law banning circumcision would “stop True Patriots from having to kill otherwise good doctors inside hospitals.”

The question of whether Christian was a Trump supporter or a Sanders supporter, doesn’t have an either/or answer, except: he definitely was not a Clinton supporter.

“Bernie Sanders was the President I wanted,” wrote Christian in December. “He voiced my heart and mind. The one who spoke about the way America should gone. Away from the Military and Prison Industrial Complexes. The Trump is who America needs now that Bernie got ripped off.”

But on Nov. 11, he posted that he was unable to bring himself to vote for Trump.

“I’ve had it!!! I gonna kill everybody who voted for Trump or Hillary!!!” he said in another post in early January. “It’s all your fault!!! You’re what’s wrong with this country!!! Reveal yourselves immediately and face your DOOM!!!”

Burley said that he believes Christian could have supported Sanders because he was against globalization and then, when Sanders lost, he “could have supported the kind of America first protection espoused by Trump.”

“What it looks like with him is a person going through an ideological process,” Burley said.

In February 2016, Christian wrote, “Just to clarify a few things: ‘I Hereby Solemnly swear to Die trying to Kill Hillary (Herself a filthy Murderess) Clinton and Donald Trump should they be elected to the post of President in my faire country on Vinland. This I swear to Odin, Kali, Bastet and all other Pagan Gods and Goddesses in my Aryan Theosophical Nucleus. This is my duty as a Viking and Patriot. In Jesus name….I Feel The Bern!!!!”

In late January, however, Christian wrote, “If Donald Trump is the Next Hitler then I am joining his SS to put an end to Monotheist Question. All Zionist Jews, All Christians who do not follow Christ’s teaching of Love, Charity, and Forgiveness And All Jihadi Muslims are going to Madagascar or the Ovens/FEMA Camps!!! Does this make me a fascist!!!”

Then a few days later he posted, “Sanders/Stein 2017!!! Let’s stop these pipelines and reign in the Prison/Military Industrial Complexes!!!”

More than anything, he seemed to hate Hillary Clinton supporters.

“The only form of abortion I support is the old fashioned method that doesn’t cost the taxpayers money: Daddy Kicks Mommy In The Stomach!!!” he wrote in January. “Also, lead poisoning via a 9MM injection for Hillary Supporters….”

“Death to Hillary Rodham Clinton and all her supporters!!!” he posted, also in January. “To be carried out by Bernie Supporters who didn’t turn traitor and vote Hillary….”

Besides his hate for Clinton and circumcision, most of his other positions seem difficult to pin down.

On Facebook, Christian certainly espoused far-right beliefs.One meme he posted reads, “If we’re removing statues because of the Civil War, we should be removing mosques because of 9/11.”

He wrote about and referenced a “white homeland” in both positive and neutral or negative terms.

“So, its like this. If you support Israel for Zionist homeland for Jews then you should also support Cascadia as a White homeland for whites only racists, Alabama and Mississippi for Nation of Islam and racist Black Power groups and give back at least so cal to Mexicans for all the illegal Latinos and any Brown racist peeps,” he wrote. “Their can be a central area ran by feds were all the normal people who don’t really care about race and gay marriage is legal. Problem solved.”

He frequently referred to himself as a nihilist and appeared to dislike monotheistic religions universally, sharing memes with sentiments like “Damn girl, are you a religious scripture? Because I want to constantly misinterpret you for my own benefit.”

“Early fascists talk about nihilism,” Burley told us. “Hating humanity on the one hand and then hating particular parts of humanity especially.”

But, while sometimes he called himself a fascist, according to various posts, he considered the Antifa, which he hated, to be a fascist organization.

On April 28, the day before the alt-right protest where he was filmed, Christian wrote: “A note too [sic] all my Portland Peeps. You should all attend the Free Speech Rally at Montavilla if you value your rights. ALL RIGHTS.”

“I will attend in Lizard King Regalia as a Political Nihilist to Provoke both Sides and attempt to engage anyone in a true Philosophy and Political Discussion,” he continued.

“I take the Role of International Patriot and Revolutionary VERY SERIOUS BUT YOU ALL KNOW I AM THE MOST LAID BACK DUDE IN THE WORLD- Until you cross that line then nothing will stop our COME TO JESUS TALK FRIEND OR FOE.”

He ends the post by saying, “FREE SPEECH OR DIE!!! THIS IS MY LAND!!! VINLAND RIP CITY!!!”

Mainly though, Christian appeared to be angry. In August of 2016, he wrote on Facebook, “Survival Tip #1: Kill Every Other Person.”

When asked about how they deal with posts calling for the death of groups of people or individuals, a Facebook spokesperson directed us to their Community Standards, which says, “We carefully review reports of threatening language to identify serious threats of harm to public and personal safety. We remove credible threats of physical harm to individuals. We may consider things like a person’s physical location or public visibility in determining whether a threat is credible.”

As far as Christian, the spokesperson said they don’t have a specific comment on his posts.

In the era of social media, it’s easy for messages like those that Christian read and those that he shared, to be passed around with not much intervention.

During a press conference on Saturday after the attack, Portland Police Sgt. Pete Simpson said police do not monitor social media unless there is “a criminal nexus.”

“There’s not a widespread monitoring because something is unpopular or scary,” Simpson said. “You have to have that crime there.”

Loren Cannon, the special agent in charge of the Portland Division of the FBI, echoed Simpson, adding that he couldn’t comment on the specifics of Christian’s posts without seeing them.

Burley believes that Christian’s “lone wolf” act of violence, and the apparent contradictions in his belief system bely a deeper problem.

“These are political acts of violence that are the responsibility of white nationalists,” he told us.

Burley said that historically, it has been the case that higher level people in far-right extremist movements rile up people down the line and it is those people, who are often marginalized, that commit the violence.

“In February 2016, Christian wrote, “Just to clarify a few things: ‘I Hereby Solemnly swear to Die trying to Kill Hillary (Herself a filthy Murderess) Clinton and Donald Trump should they be elected to the post of President in my faire country on Vinland. This I swear to Odin, Kali, Bastet and all other Pagan Gods and Goddesses in my Aryan Theosophical Nucleus. This is my duty as a Viking and Patriot. In Jesus name….I Feel The Bern!!!!””

And that right there is why the Antifa approach to things is so dangerous: Some dude with an “Aryan Theosophical Nucleus” when he’s not spouting white supremacist memes might declare his desires for political violence. And then declare his love of Bernie Sanders. And while Jeremy Christian happened to be very anti-Antifa, calling them fascists, there’s nothing stopping someone like him joining one of the Antifa groups. Or an undercover government agent who also has orders to make them look like a massive national security threat. It’s pretty much guaranteed that some percentage of their ranks include infiltrators since these are movements basically anyone can join. And another percent just might include kind of crazy people drawn to extreme politics. That’s just the nature of radical movements that anyone can join. And these extreme risks present by and to Antifa exists in a volatile political environment where an organized white supremacist movement bolstered by a Trump presidency is trying to strategically create a cycle of violence intended to create a divide-and-conquer wedge meme asking people “who do you support, white nationalists defending your heritage or violent Antifa radicals?”. And the broader right-wing media and GOP is more than happy to play along and promote that “violent Left” meme. It’s a bad situation. And that was before Roger Stone started talking about violent insurrection in the face of a Trump impeachment.

So given that President Trump has decided to make the acknowledgement of “bad people” on “all sides” in the Charlottesville tragedy one of his key political talking points, perhaps there would be some value in meeting him half-way, and noting that the inevitable neo-Nazi infiltrators like Jeremy Christian on the side of the counter-protestors were indeed just as bad as the neo-Nazi marchers. And maybe even agree that Antifa groups can sometimes include some bad actors who aren’t crypto-Nazis or COINTELPRO troublemakers but just bad news. But also ask that President Trump agree that Nazis are way, way, way worse in terms of being “bad people” than even the bad Antifa folks. Racial supremacists who plot violent overthrows with dreams of genocide are much, much, much worse than a bunch of quasi-militant extreme left-wingers, right? Can everyone but the Nazis agree with the notion that Nazis are far worse than even bad Antifa people who maybe shouldn’t be so willing to embrace violence? If so, great, because that would mean we may have found some sort of common ground, and if there’s one thing that’s going to be needed in abundance to ultimately defeat today’s Nazis it’s common ground. Lots of common ground and a recognition that destroying common ground is another one of things that’s simultaneously an ends and a means for the far-right:

Wonkette

Antifa Loves Beating Women! Say Idiot 4Chan Nazis Who Made It All Up

By Robyn Pennacchia –
August 24, 2017 – 3:30pm

As you may be aware (SIGH), idiots on 4chan have taken to making up fake Twitter profiles for Antifa and Antifa “members.” This is something they do with stunning regularity in order to push their own far Right positions. Often it’s women rejecting feminism, black people rejecting anti-racism, or people embracing those things in the most absurd way they can imagine, in hopes of getting reasonable people to think that they support absurd things.

On Wednesday, trolls on 4chan’s /pol/ board attempted to launch a new #PunchANazi/#PunchNazis campaign on social media in which their fake Antifa profiles would support domestic violence, in hopes of convincing people that the Left LOVES domestic violence and thinks it is super great.

The goal, as usual, was to get actual Antifa and supporters to retweet the memes, which of course did not actually happen.

The memes included clever jargon like “She said she was right-wing, so I gave her a left hook,” and “It’s all right, she’s alt-right,” next to pictures of women with black eyes. There were also several with pictures of abused children with text suggesting they be murdered because they might be the next Hitler.

However, given that they posted their nefarious plans on a public message board, and that this campaign was both incredibly obvious and stupid, said plans were quickly discovered by several people online, including David Futrelle of We Hunted The Mammoth, and British citizen journalist Elliot Higgins, best known for identifying the weapons seen in uploaded videos from the Syrian Civil War. It was then reported on by the BBC.

The thing with these message boards — which I maintain are a thousand times more toxic than any alt-right spokesperson could ever dream of being — is that those who use them become so deeply enmeshed in their own views that they actually do legitimately believe they are making sense, and that this is a thing they can “trick” the left into being on board with. They are essentially brainwashed.

Part of their agenda as of late has been to try to drive a wedge between white women and people of color. Not because they particularly like women — they don’t, and many appear to be very upset about the 19th Amendment — but because feel that this is the easiest way to split the Left, and because they have recently decided that in order to achieve their aims, they need white women to join them, for breeding purposes only.

…

Over on another thread, several /pol/ denizens were also whining about how they have been infiltrated by outsiders and “normies” posting threads and “making it difficult for /pol/ users who could potentially benefit from knowing certain information, and potentially coherently gather and discuss certain things, from doing so.”

“The thing with these message boards — which I maintain are a thousand times more toxic than any alt-right spokesperson could ever dream of being — is that those who use them become so deeply enmeshed in their own views that they actually do legitimately believe they are making sense, and that this is a thing they can “trick” the left into being on board with. They are essentially brainwashed.”

And thanks to that essentially brainwashed mentality, the hyper-misogynistic 4Chan folks decided to openly plot a fake campaign intended to smear Antifa as pro-violence against white women as part of some sort of Alt-Right divide and conquer campaign intended to create a rift between white women and the Left. Because white supremacist misogynists still need white women for breeding purposes:

…
Part of their agenda as of late has been to try to drive a wedge between white women and people of color. Not because they particularly like women — they don’t, and many appear to be very upset about the 19th Amendment — but because feel that this is the easiest way to split the Left, and because they have recently decided that in order to achieve their aims, they need white women to join them, for breeding purposes only.
…

And that’s who we’re dealing with: people who desperately want to create a “violent Left” cultural zeitgeist with American conservatives as part of the white supremacists endless efforts to win over a broader audience. And yes, they failed spectacularly this time. Not only did they get caught, but the people that were arguing that the hoax worked anyway because it reminded people that Antifa backs violence of course forget that smearing Antifa with domestic violence merely reminds people that the Antifa groups focus their violence on what they view as sources of oppression, as opposed to white supremacists who focus their violence on everyone who isn’t a white supremacist. Even the white women who they need for breeding will probably get a lot of violence inflicted on them too since white supremacists tend to be misogynists. That’s what the 4Chan campaign effectively communicated. It wasn’t the best 4Chan campaign.

But that doesn’t mean the far-right won’t succeed in pulling off a “violent Left” divide and conquer psyop on US conservatives some day and it’s going to be a lot easier to succeed with Antifa predictably showing up to brawl and predictably being open to infiltration. Especially with so much of the right-wing media fully on board with pushing the “violent Left” meme. And President Trump.

NRA seeks to mainstream — and monetize — the “alt-right’s” paranoid, racist talking points
The “alt-right” wants America to believe violent radicals are on the attack; the NRA knows paranoia can sell guns

Amanda Marcotte
Thursday, Aug 24, 2017 03:59 AM CST

Whenever Donald Trump feels like he’s on the ropes, he throws himself a rally in a red state that would make Mussolini feel envious. So it was on Tuesday night in Phoenix, when Trump — furious that the media took issue with his claim that a torch-wielding mob of white supremacists was replete with “fine people” — unleashed a 75-minute rant about his own victimization to a crowd who, despite their immense love for the Bigot-in-Chief, started getting bored and drifted away.

The highlight reel of Trump’s feature-film-length whine demonstrates, yet again, that the president is echoing talking points from the same white supremacist and “alt-right” circles that he struggles to half-heartedly denounce: Monuments to the white supremacist Confederate regime are “our history and heritage,” that white communities need to be “liberated” from violent immigrants, and politicized violence in the streets is being caused not by fascists, but by antifa activists who show up to resist them.

Trump’s conservative audiences are disturbingly comfortable with these talking points, and that’s due to a larger right-wing media infrastructure that has been pushing these notions into more mainstream conservative spaces. Earlier this week, I reported on the role that Tucker Carlson and the Daily Caller are playing in injecting more radical rhetoric into conservative discourse. But the NRA — a gun lobby that in recent years has built its own little media empire through blogs and NRATV — has also played a major role in promoting ideas that used to dwell on the fringes.

“For years, the gun lobby quietly dog-whistled to white supremacists,” said Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense In America, which is part of Everytown for Gun Safety. “But as gun sales plummet under this administration, they are now openly trafficking in paranoia and fear, and inciting violence in order to advance an increasingly radical ‘more guns for anyone, anywhere’ agenda to sell more guns.”

She went on to recommend that well-armed NRA members meet this supposed upsurge of radical violence with “the clenched fist of truth.”

Loesch’s video echoed the arguments of NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, who gave a speech in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference warning about the rise of the “violent left.”

“Right now, we face a gathering of forces that are willing to use violence against us,” LaPierre said. “If the violent left brings their terror to our communities, our neighborhoods or into our homes, they will be met with the resolve and the strength and the full force of American freedom in the hands of the American people. Among them and behind them are some of the most radical political elements there are. Anarchists, Marxists, communists and the whole rest of the left-wing socialist brigade.”

…

These claims that there’s some surge of left-wing violence that needs to be shut down by the armed vigilance of the right should be familiar to anyone who has followed the rise of the “alt-right” and the youth-oriented white supremacist movement. For months now, “alt-right” figures like Kyle “Based Stickman” Chapman have argued that violent leftists present a physical threat to “free speech” and must be met with violence. “Alt-right” social media feeds are replete with young men bragging about how they can’t wait to assault left-wing protesters — or run them down with cars — all in the thinly veiled disguise of “self-defense.”

This was the excuse that the neo-Nazis and other assorted racists used to justify showing up in Charlottesville with guns, shields and helmets, even though it was obvious to most of the public that they weren’t acting in self-defense so much as deliberately trying to provoke street fights. It’s true that these goons are sometimes met by antifa demonstrators who are ready to rumble, but as counter-protests in both Boston and Charlottesville demonstrated, violent leftists are a tiny majority and not actually a threat that can serve to justify right-wing violence.

On Monday night the president echoed these claims, calling out “antifa” by name and saying they “show up in the helmets and the black masks and they have clubs and everything.” Again, this contains a grain of truth — a small number of armed, masked leftists sometimes show up at counter-protests — but the larger truth is that most progressive protesters are armed with nothing but cardboard signs. It’s really the white supremacists and fascists that are showing up in large numbers with weapons, guns, shields and helmets. As the failed “alt-right” rally in Boston showed, if the far right isn’t allowed to arm itself, its forces frequently won’t bother to show up at all.

As Watts argued, it’s not surprising to see the NRA tap into white-supremacist talking points, and not just because LaPierre and other NRA spokespeople have a long history of pushing racist fantasies in order to scare heartland white folks into buying guns. The truth of the matter is that Trump’s presidency, while ideologically congenial for the gun lobby, is bad for business. In the spring, a “Trump slump” in gun sales was widely reported. The firearms industry’s marketing is largely based around appealing to conservative insecurities. When Democrats are in office — especially, say, a black president — anxious conservatives buy more guns to feel powerful. If a Republican is in charge, conservatives feel less need to shore up their self-esteem with high-powered weaponry.

In recent months, though, gun sales started to rise again, and it’s not hard to see why: Conservatives are responding to a steady drumbeat of warnings — from Trump, from right-wing media, from the NRA — that the country is under assault from criminal gangs and violent leftists, and they need to be ready.

The results of this were all too chillingly on display in Charlottesville as hundreds of white supremacists descended on the city, many of them laden down with expensive weapons. Images like this also provide effective advertising for the gun industry, as the images of gun-wielding wannabe-fascists convince other embittered right-wingers that there’s an exciting movement to join, and all they need to do is lay down a credit card at the nearest gun shop.

“The highlight reel of Trump’s feature-film-length whinedemonstrates, yet again, that the president is echoing talking points from the same white supremacist and “alt-right” circles that he struggles to half-heartedly denounce: Monuments to the white supremacist Confederate regime are “our history and heritage,” that white communities need to be “liberated” from violent immigrants, and politicized violence in the streets is being caused not by fascists, but by antifa activists who show up to resist them.”

Yep, when Trump makes Antifa the focus of a cynical political strategy to concoct a “violent Left” threat mythology while simultaneously downplaying his ties to a very real “violent far-Right” threat, Trumnp is basically echoing the same thing Trump’s core base of supporters get from right-wing radio, Breitbart, and Fox News every day. And the gun lobby’s own media empire its built in recent years, which is apparently specializing in mainstreaming fringe far-right conspiracy theory and thought. That’s not a super dangerous situation or anything:

…
Trump’s conservative audiences are disturbingly comfortable with these talking points, and that’s due to a larger right-wing media infrastructure that has been pushing these notions into more mainstream conservative spaces. Earlier this week, I reported on the role that Tucker Carlson and the Daily Caller are playing in injecting more radical rhetoric into conservative discourse. But the NRA — a gun lobby that in recent years has built its own little media empire through blogs and NRATV — has also played a major role in promoting ideas that used to dwell on the fringes.

“For years, the gun lobby quietly dog-whistled to white supremacists,” said Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense In America, which is part of Everytown for Gun Safety. “But as gun sales plummet under this administration, they are now openly trafficking in paranoia and fear, and inciting violence in order to advance an increasingly radical ‘more guns for anyone, anywhere’ agenda to sell more guns.”
…

And right-wing talker Dana Loesch is making NRA recruitment videos warning people of liberal violence, echoing the words of NRA president Wayne LaPierre:

She went on to recommend that well-armed NRA members meet this supposed upsurge of radical violence with “the clenched fist of truth.”

Loesch’s video echoed the arguments of NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, who gave a speech in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference warning about the rise of the “violent left.”

“Right now, we face a gathering of forces that are willing to use violence against us,” LaPierre said. “If the violent left brings their terror to our communities, our neighborhoods or into our homes, they will be met with the resolve and the strength and the full force of American freedom in the hands of the American people. Among them and behind them are some of the most radical political elements there are. Anarchists, Marxists, communists and the whole rest of the left-wing socialist brigade.”…

So who’s a bigger threat, Wayne LaPierre or Antifa? Obvious LaPierre. He’s literally running an empire that peddles guns and ‘reasons’ to use them against political opponents. Still, we can’t ignore that the violent segments of Antifa are playing into La Pierre’s sick attempt to paint the Left by taking an overt ‘fight the fascists with your fists in the streets’ presenting some sort of violent threat. While Antifa is admittedly quite helpful in the face of far-right militant protestors like the “Unite the Right” marchers who would have attacked all the counter-protesters there’s a significant cost if it means playing into neo-Nazi violence cycle schemes. Now is definitely not the time for casually playing into neo-Nazi violence cycle schemes:

The New Yorker

Is America Headed for a New Kind of Civil War?

By Robin Wright

August 14, 2017

A day after the brawling and racist brutality and deaths in Virginia, Governor Terry McAuliffe asked, “How did we get to this place?” The more relevant question after Charlottesville—and other deadly episodes in Ferguson, Charleston, Dallas, St. Paul, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, and Alexandria—is where the United States is headed. How fragile is the Union, our republic, and a country that has long been considered the world’s most stable democracy? The dangers are now bigger than the collective episodes of violence. “The radical right was more successful in entering the political mainstream last year than in half a century,” the Southern Poverty Law Center reported in February. The organization documents more than nine hundred active (and growing) hate groups in the United States.

America’s stability is increasingly an undercurrent in political discourse. Earlier this year, I began a conversation with Keith Mines about America’s turmoil. Mines has spent his career—in the U.S. Army Special Forces, the United Nations, and now the State Department—navigating civil wars in other countries, including Afghanistan, Colombia, El Salvador, Iraq, Somalia, and Sudan. He returned to Washington after sixteen years to find conditions that he had seen nurture conflict abroad now visible at home. It haunts him. In March, Mines was one of several national-security experts whom Foreign Policyasked to evaluate the risks of a second civil war—with percentages. Mines concluded that the United States faces a sixty-per-cent chance of civil war over the next ten to fifteen years. Other experts’ predictions ranged from five per cent to ninety-five per cent. The sobering consensus was thirty-five per cent. And that was five months before Charlottesville.

“We keep saying, ‘It can’t happen here,’ but then, holy smokes, it can,” Mines told me after we talked, on Sunday, about Charlottesville. The pattern of civil strife has evolved worldwide over the past sixty years. Today, few civil wars involve pitched battles from trenches along neat geographic front lines. Many are low-intensity conflicts with episodic violence in constantly moving locales. Mines’s definition of a civil war is large-scale violence that includes a rejection of traditional political authority and requires the National Guard to deal with it. On Saturday, McAuliffe put the National Guard on alert and declared a state of emergency.

Based on his experience in civil wars on three continents, Mines cited five conditions that support his prediction: entrenched national polarization, with no obvious meeting place for resolution; increasingly divisive press coverage and information flows; weakened institutions, notably Congress and the judiciary; a sellout or abandonment of responsibility by political leadership; and the legitimization of violence as the “in” way to either conduct discourse or solve disputes.

President Trump “modeled violence as a way to advance politically and validated bullying during and after the campaign,” Mines wrote in Foreign Policy. “Judging from recent events the left is now fully on board with this,” he continued, citing anarchists in anti-globalization riots as one of several flashpoints. “It is like 1859, everyone is mad about something and everyone has a gun.”

To test Mines’s conjecture, I reached out to five prominent Civil War historians this weekend. “When you look at the map of red and blue states and overlap on top of it the map of the Civil War—and who was allied with who in the Civil War—not much has changed,” Judith Giesberg, the editor of the Journal of the Civil War Era and a historian at Villanova University, told me. “We never agreed on the outcome of the Civil War and the direction the country should go in. The postwar amendments were highly contentious—especially the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides equal protection under the law—and they still are today. What does it mean to deliver voting rights to people of color? We still don’t know.”

She added, “Does that make us vulnerable to a repeat of the past? I don’t see a repeat of those specific circumstances. But that doesn’t mean we are not entering something similar in the way of a culture war. We are vulnerable to racism, tribalism, and conflicting visions of the way forward for our nation.”

Anxiety over deepening schisms and new conflict has an outlet in popular culture: in April, Amazon selected the dystopian novel American War—which centers on a second U.S. civil war—as one of its best books of the month. In a review in the Washington Post, Ron Charles wrote, “Across these scarred pages rages the clash that many of us are anxiously speculating about in the Trump era: a nation riven by irreconcilable ideologies, alienated by entrenched suspicions . . . both poignant and horrifying.” The Times book reviewer noted, “It’s a work of fiction. For the time being, anyway.” The book’s author, Omar El Akkad, was born in Egypt and covered the war in Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, and the Ferguson protest as a journalist for Canada’s Globe and Mail.

Before Charlottesville, David Blight, a Yale historian, was already planning a conference in November on “American Disunion, Then and Now.” “Parallels and analogies are always risky, but we do have weakened institutions and not just polarized parties but parties that are risking disintegration, which is what happened in the eighteen-fifties,” he told me. “Slavery tore apart, over fifteen years, both major political parties. It destroyed the Whig Party, which was replaced by the Republican Party, and divided the Democratic Party into northern and southern parts.”

“So,” he said, “watch the parties” as an indicator of America’s health.

In the eighteen-fifties, Blight told me, Americans were not good at foreseeing or absorbing the “shock of events,” including the Fugitive Slave Act, the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, the John Brown raid, and even the Mexican-American War. “No one predicted them. They forced people to reposition themselves,” Blight said. “We’re going through one of those repositionings now. Trump’s election is one of them, and we’re still trying to figure it out. But it’s not new. It dates to Obama’s election. We thought that would lead culture in the other direction, but it didn’t,” he said. “There was a tremendous resistance from the right, then these episodes of police violence, and all these things [from the past] exploded again. It’s not only a racial polarization but a seizure about identity.”

Generally, Blight added, “We know we are at risk of civil war, or something like it, when an election, an enactment, an event, an action by government or people in high places, becomes utterly unacceptable to a party, a large group, a significant constituency.” The nation witnessed tectonic shifts on the eve of the Civil War, and during the civil-rights era, the unrest of the late nineteen-sixties and the Vietnam War, he said. “It did not happen with Bush v. Gore, in 2000, but perhaps we were close. It is not inconceivable that it could happen now.”

In a reversal of public opinion from the nineteen-sixties, Blight said, the weakening of political institutions today has led Americans to shift their views on which institutions are credible. “Who do we put our faith in today? Maybe, ironically, the F.B.I.,” he said. “With all these military men in the Trump Administration, that’s where we’re putting our hope for the use of reason. It’s not the President. It’s not Congress, which is utterly dysfunctional and run by men who spent decades dividing us in order to keep control, and not even the Supreme Court, because it’s been so politicized.”

In the wake of Charlottesville, the chorus of condemnation from politicians across the political spectrum has been encouraging, but it is not necessarily reassuring or an indicator about the future, Gregory Downs, a historian at the University of California at Davis, told me. During the Civil War, even Southern politicians who denounced or were wary of secession for years—including Jefferson Davis—ended up as leaders of the Confederacy. “If the source of conflict is deeply embedded in cultural or social forces, then politicians are not inherently able to restrain them with calls for reason,” Downs said. He called the noxious white supremacists and neo-Nazis the “messengers,” rather than the “architects,” of the Republic’s potential collapse. But, he warned, “We take our stability for granted.”

…

Eric Foner, the Columbia University historian, won the Pulitzer Prize, in 2011, for his book “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.” Like the other scholars I spoke to, Foner is skeptical that any future conflict will resemble America’s last civil war. “Obviously, we have some pretty deep divisions along multiple lines—racial, ideological, rural versus urban,” he told me. “Whether they will lead to civil war, I doubt. We have strong gravitational forces that counteract what we’re seeing today.” He pointed out that “the spark in Charlottesville—taking down a statue of Robert E. Lee—doesn’t have to do with civil war. People are not debating the Civil War. They’re debating American society and race today.”

Charlottesville was not the first protest by the so-called alt-right, nor will it be the last. Nine more rallies are planned for next weekend and others in September.

“America’s stability is increasingly an undercurrent in political discourse. Earlier this year, I began a conversation with Keith Mines about America’s turmoil. Mines has spent his career—in the U.S. Army Special Forces, the United Nations, and now the State Department—navigating civil wars in other countries, including Afghanistan, Colombia, El Salvador, Iraq, Somalia, and Sudan. He returned to Washington after sixteen years to find conditions that he had seen nurture conflict abroad now visible at home. It haunts him. In March, Mines was one of several national-security experts whom Foreign Policyasked to evaluate the risks of a second civil war—with percentages. Mines concluded that the United States faces a sixty-per-cent chance of civil war over the next ten to fifteen years. Other experts’ predictions ranged from five per cent to ninety-five per cent. The sobering consensus was thirty-five per cent. And that was five months before Charlottesville.”

Talk about Dr. Doom: Mines concluded that the United States faces a sixty-per-cent chance of civil war over the next ten to fifteen years. But at least he’s an outlier in that prediction among the experts polls and when he spoke of “civil war” it appears he means something very different from the Civil War, where states went to war with each other, and instead a war of vigilante violence political violence that at some point requires the National Guard. Exactly the thing the far-right wants to happen (presumably with Trump calling in the National Guard on their side):

…
“We keep saying, ‘It can’t happen here,’ but then, holy smokes, it can,” Mines told me after we talked, on Sunday, about Charlottesville. The pattern of civil strife has evolved worldwide over the past sixty years. Today, few civil wars involve pitched battles from trenches along neat geographic front lines. Many are low-intensity conflicts with episodic violence in constantly moving locales. Mines’s definition of a civil war is large-scale violence that includes a rejection of traditional political authority and requires the National Guard to deal with it. On Saturday, McAuliffe put the National Guard on alert and declared a state of emergency.

Based on his experience in civil wars on three continents, Mines cited five conditions that support his prediction: entrenched national polarization, with no obvious meeting place for resolution; increasingly divisive press coverage and information flows; weakened institutions, notably Congress and the judiciary; a sellout or abandonment of responsibility by political leadership; and the legitimization of violence as the “in” way to either conduct discourse or solve disputes.

President Trump “modeled violence as a way to advance politically and validated bullying during and after the campaign,” Mines wrote in Foreign Policy. “Judging from recent events the left is now fully on board with this,” he continued, citing anarchists in anti-globalization riots as one of several flashpoints. “It is like 1859, everyone is mad about something and everyone has a gun.”
…

“President Trump “modeled violence as a way to advance politically and validated bullying during and after the campaign,” Mines wrote in Foreign Policy. “Judging from recent events the left is now fully on board with this,” he continued, citing anarchists in anti-globalization riots as one of several flashpoints. “It is like 1859, everyone is mad about something and everyone has a gun.””

Yep, President Trump, has indeed “modeled violence as a way to advance politically and validated bullying during and after the campaign”, as Keith Mines, the ex-Special Forces civil war expert in the US State Department, describes it. And that’s one of the reason he sees a 65 percent chance of a conflict of mass violence that requires the National Guard, or ‘civil war’ as he puts it. And thankfully he’s not talking about something as destructive as another state on state civil war. Mines’s civil war scenario is something far less severe. But Mines’s civil war scenario of outright violent conflict between dueling sides of society that requires the National Guard to address still represents a very real existential threat to the US since we’re talking about Nazi movements utilizing mass organized violence as a tool for coming to power at any cost. The battles are part of a broader psyop. One of the goals is the normalization of political violence and that’s also the means. And all this is for the ultimate purpose of racial subjugation and genocide. Again, these are real Nazis we’re talking about.

So given that a bunch of Nazis are actively trying to provoke a civil-war in the United States and given that the willingness to engage in anti-Nazi violence by Antifa is one of the wedge issues the Nazis are creating as part of an “pick your side, us or them” divide and conquer tactic, perhaps it’s worth declaring an explicitly non-violent ‘civil war’ of sorts: a ‘war’ on our inability to talk about differences and conflict. Americans use the term ‘war’ for all sorts of things. A ‘war’ on cancer, poverty, drugs, terror, etc. So how about a ‘war’ on the non-violent resolution of enduring conflicts. Tricky, tough conflicts that have been simmering for so long that we’ve also collectively lost the ability to have a meaningful conversation about them. Let’s declare a ‘war’ on that. And conveniently we already have the perfect organization for facilitating such a ‘war’: Life After Hate, a group that effectively treats the disease of extremist hate by sitting extremists down with members of the groups they fear and despise.

And since we have a Reality TV US President, how about a reality TV show that sits down a group of neo-Nazis and alt-rightists with a bunch of Antifa people and forces them to discuss their differences. And since Nazis obviously embrace the use of lies, disinformation, and general rhetorical trickery there could be various outside experts and Life After Hate members also participating in the group therapy session so someone can step in when the Nazis’ historical revisionism gets too egregious. The show ends when they figure out how to hug it out and we declare a war on violence. Maybe President Trump could sit in on a few sessions. Think of the ratings!

Barring that, could we at least agree to find the following common ground:

1. The violent Antifa members present a real dilemma and potentially a subversive force that could end up playing right into the hands of an organized far-right movement intent on creating a “violent Left” mythology. Antifa members maybe have picked the right target, but the wrong tactic when they engage in preemptive violence. Political violence, even just street brawls where no one dies, is a taboo tactic because it really does threaten society. There are reasons we don’t punch Nazis even if they deserve it. There’s value in that. So if it’s in self-defense that’s one valid use of violence, but playing into Nazi schemes to create escalating cycles of violence is not at all ok.

2. While there are undoubtedly some “bad people” in Antifa, as Donald Trump would put it, and people with really messed up political views (like anarchists who want to see society collapse so they can build an anarcho-whatever utopia) we should all be able to agree that even the bad Antifa members are highly unlikely to be as bad as Nazis. Ok, it’s inevitable there’s few Antifa member who are as bad as a Nazi who aren’t crypto-Nazi infiltrators. That’s going to happen in a big enough group. And then there’s the actual crypto-Nazi infiltrators who really are as bad as the Nazis. But in general can we all agree that even groups with politics and economic paradigms that we may not personally like and who are willing to be militant towards Nazis, and pretty much just towards Nazis or Nazi-like groups, are far better than Nazis who want to subjugate and exterminate entire races?

3. Making the distinction of how much worse Nazism is than whatever particular far-left vision Antifa members might hold is an important distinction to make in this context because even if you’re an uber-capitalist who hates Communists there’s a widely held recognition that race-based supremacy ideologies are horrific and collective doom and rejecting that is a foundation of decent and durable societies and individuals. Getting the economics right is important. Recognizing the evil and terror caused by of racial-supremacy ideologies is more important because it’s even more foundational for building a decent and durable society populated by decent people.

Is that available as common ground? A simple recognition that Antifa’s willingness to engage preemptive violence is bad when it occurs but Nazis are much worse because they want to subjugate entire groups and races? Can we at least agree to all that? Because if the predictions of sleaze bags like Roger Stone or academics like Keith Mines that the Unites States could experience a ‘civil war’-ish scenario in the near future comes to to fruition it seems pretty likely that it will only happen when the ‘Alt-Right’ and neo-Nazis successfully sell themselves as “the lesser of two evils” with the “violent Left” getting framed as the greater evil. And these street brawls are undoubtedly playing a huge role in the successful propagation of that meme.

So perhaps it’s worth making it clear that Antifa undoubtedly has some “bad people”, because all movements have that element, but also that Antifa is stupidly falling for a trap laid by the ‘Alt-Right’ neo-Nazis. A trap intended to create a cycle of violence as part of a larger divide and conquer strategy designed to pose a question to the general public “do you stand with the white nationalists or do you stand with those Antifa commies?” That’s the trap and it’s a really stupid trap to fall into. And you know who else is stupidly falling for that trap? Anyone who thinks the Nazis in Charlottesville were the lesser of two evils or even equally bad as Antifa. Antifa inevitably has to bad or misguided elements. Nazis are unambiguously much, much worse. Can American society arrive at that common ground? Or are we already caught in a stupidity trap? Hopefully we’re not trapped by stupidity yet. We’ll see.

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